Unending
by Halm Vendrella
Summary: The Crucible is activated. The Reapers are destroyed. And a man who should be dead takes a breath. Find out how Commander Shepard survived... and what the Catalyst's deception means for the galaxy.
1. Prologue: Chatter

Mass Effect is the property of EA and BioWare.

* * *

**Prologue**

**CHATTER**

"Hammer squads, go, go, go!"

"Don't stop until you reach the beam!"

"Husks, two o'clock."

"Keep moving!"

"Enemies everywhere!"

"Don't stop to shoot, go!"

"Scatter, don't stay so close!"

"Contact left!"

"Suppressing fire! Watch the flanks, don't let them cut us off."

"Go! Get to the beam, the beam!"

"Somebody put some fire on that Reaper! It's tearing us apart!"

"Where's our air cover?"

"We're sitting ducks out here!"

"Watch out!"

"Damn it, was that—?"

"Commander!"

"_SHEPARD!_"

"Shepard's been hit!"

"DAMNIT!"

"Goddess! _NO!_"

"We can't stop here! Keep running!"

"I can't—"

"Move!"

"Spread out! It can't kill all of us, just keep moving!"

"No one's getting close, the Reaper—"

"Mother of God, what…?"

"It's heading straight for us!"

"Is that—?"

"It's not slowing down!"

"No shit, it's a dreadnought in atmo!"

"_Get to the beam!_ Hammer squads, all units, _advance!_"

"Oh, no, they can't possibly…"

"Take cover!"

"_Where?_"

"Run!"

"Oh, God."

"Is anyone still alive?"

"Who's left? Ground teams, someone, anyone, report!"

"No hostile contacts. But the beam…"

"Did anyone make it?"

"I saw a few, I think, before …"

"Did they shut it down?"

"I think the explosion took it out."

"Does it matter?"

"No. It doesn't. This is Admiral Anderson to Hammer, all squads fall back."

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***A/N*** - I disliked the ending of Mass Effect 3. I most definitely did not dislike the other 99.5% of the Mass Effect series, so I'm writing this.

Credit where it's due: this fic is inspired by the Indoctrination Theory, but knowing about it won't be required to understand the story. The IT is a good alternative interpretation of canon, but this is not a fictionalization of the IT. (You can find a link to ACAVYOS' YouTube video in my profile if you're interested.)

What is it, then? Catharsis? Tribute? Fix fic? Personal take on what the Extended Cut DLC should look like? Maybe a little "all of the above." Read on to find out.

Questions? Comments? Review!


	2. Chapter One: Reignite

**Chapter One**

**REIGNITE**

Everything hurt.

It wasn't supposed to. He knew that, though he didn't know why. He didn't know why anything was right now.

He could see. Blurry impressions, drifting in and out of his vision like half-remembered dreams. The shapes changed from time to time, indistinct but as recognizable as sunset and sunrise. Sometimes he could make out colors. He wanted to look at the shapes, wanted to see them clearly. But the brightness hurt more than the darkness, so he could never keep his eyes open long enough to remember why.

He could hear. Noises, and halting sounds that some part of him called words. Some of the sounds were familiar to him, like the shapes and colors, enough to make him think that they went together somehow. He loved to hear the sounds, but they made his head hurt more. When he hurt, he knew that some of the sounds were his. But he could never remember what he was trying to say, and when he made noises the darkness would come back, and the others would seem to go away. He didn't like that, even if the quiet didn't hurt as much.

The pain was always there, whether it was the stabbing that came from every motion, or the throbbing that filled everywhere that was still. He could feel things sometimes, other than the pain. Warm hands on his shoulders. Firm hands on his arms. And a hand on his forehead, cool but soft, that made him feel that the pain might eventually go away.

The pain would lessen at times, though he didn't know why. The shapes would become sharper, the noises clearer, and the touches more distinct. But that was when the deeper hurts would emerge, not stinging or throbbing or piercing, but hollow, in places where the only way to make the pain stop was to give in to the darkness, and wish it would end. It was supposed to end.

No. It was supposed to be over. He didn't know why, but he knew that. Now he just wished that he knew when it would come true.

* * *

"He's waking up."

"He can't. It's too soon."

"If we go any higher on the sedatives we'll kill him."

"We don't have a choice."

"Then we need to begin. I'm ready."

"If you say so."

"The admiral left orders. I have to call him."

"Then go, call him. I'll be here."

* * *

It came in bits and pieces. Like the moorings on a ship coming in to port, one by one the thoughts locked into place: the thoughts that told Commander John Shepard that he was alive.

He tried to open his eyes, but every attempt seemed to get lost somewhere between his brain and his face. After what felt like forever, he managed something that approached a drowsy squint. He tried to sit up, but that was even more difficult. His body refused to move at all, and when that effort kept proving fruitless he tried to talk instead. That gave him the satisfaction of hearing a rattling croak.

"Don't try to talk. Here, drink." The familiar voice was followed by a dull touch against his lips. Trying to shape his mouth around the straw required an effort that made him long for the ease and leisure of boot camp, but when he was rewarded with the feeling of cold water in his mouth, it seemed worth it tenfold.

"Slowly. There's more where that came from, don't worry."

Something about the voice let him believe that. The world wasn't coming into focus yet, but persistent attempts at opening his eyes were at least letting him see more blur.

"Poor humans. At times like this, I bet you wish you had fancy suits with emergency induction ports built in."

_Tali_.

"Yes, it's me. Stay still. You're in bad shape, if you hadn't figured that out yet. If you want more water, just nod."

He hadn't realized he'd managed to speak, but the renewed dryness of his throat confirmed the attempt. He forced his head up the barest fraction, then back down. Not just because he was still thirsty, but also because the simple presence of a friend felt better than even the taste of water had.

By the time he managed another swallow, the effort of keeping his eyes open felt like more than he could bear. He didn't want to go to sleep again, not when he knew he could still be awake. Or maybe he just didn't want to find out that this was all a dream.

"Rest, Shepard. Don't worry. Get well."

* * *

The next time his eyes opened, he could actually see. He had no sense of time, no idea how long it had been. Not since the Citadel, or since he had last been awake. He had only the vaguest of recollections of the time in between.

His body still refused to move, but at least now he was lucid enough to realize he was immobilized. That meant either a hospital or a full-fledged medical bay. The latter was more likely; the air had the familiar tinge of a ship's recycled oxygen. It was the smell that had meant home to him all his life… though this was not _home_. No. The _Normandy_ was lost. He couldn't remember why, but he knew.

"Easy, Commander," said a voice he didn't recognize. "Don't try to move. You're in a stasis field. It keeps your body still so it can heal."

"Noticed," he rasped. His voice felt rough and disused, but at least the sound coming from his throat was an intelligible word. It felt good.

A face in a surgical mask appeared above him. A gloved hand followed suit, one finger outstretched. It moved left to right, then up and down, and he followed the movement, blinking against the glare.

"Very good, sir. Looks like you're coming around for real this time. Do you know where you are?"

"Med… bay." He tried to swallow through a freshly dry throat. "Ship… Which?"

"You're aboard the _Marseilles_," the nurse replied. "Here."

Shepard took a grateful sip through the offered straw. "Thanks."

The corners of her eyes crinkled above the edge of the mask. "Least I could do." The sound of an airlock opening drew her gaze. Shepard's as well, though he found his field of vision too limited to see who was coming in.

"Welcome back, ma'am," the nurse said. "He's coming around again."

"Seriously, Shepard? I'm gone for five minutes and you decide that's a good time to wake up?" A familiar pane of purple plastic followed the playful words, and he managed a weak smile.

"Never liked waiting," he croaked. Getting even that brief sentence out felt like an accomplishment.

The door hissed open once more. This time, the nurse snapped to attention when she saw who came in. "How's our patient?"

"Admiral Hackett," Shepard recognized the new voice at once. The sound of that gravelly rasp filled him with a relief he couldn't express.

"Commander. I suppose I can forgive you for not saluting, just this once."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't mention it. Saving the galaxy has to come with some perks, after all."

The statement started a fluttering sensation in his gut, and an unpleasant buzzing in the back of his head. "We won?"

"What's with the tone of surprise?" Tali teased. But the playfulness vanished as she laid a gloved hand, cool and soft, on his shoulder. "Yes, Shepard. We did it."

The upper half of Hackett's face replaced the nurse on the opposite side of the bed from Tali. Even admirals weren't exempt from infection protocols, it seemed. It was odd to be presented by that bluff gaze with its signature scar hidden from sight. For some reason, it made it easier to see the lines of worry that stood out even among the crow's feet. "Do you remember anything?"

The Admiral's blue eyes were fixed intently on him. Behind her mask, Shepard noticed Tali's gaze flick up to Hackett before returning to him. She looked… worried, for some reason.

"Bits and pieces," Shepard said honestly. His head felt like it was packed with wool. Even as he tried to grasp them, the memories seemed to vanish, as if into a fog. He frowned. "Hard to think."

Something in Hackett's expression softened a bit. "Don't push yourself. None of us is going anywhere, if you need more rest. We don't have to do this now."

Shepard shook his head. Even the slow movement left him a little dizzy. "Not that. It's just… fuzzy."

"Take your time."

"Harbinger. I remember Harbinger. And…" he flinched. The human mind was not conditioned to remember pain, but some things had a way of sticking with you. Locked in the stasis field and a haze of discomfort, Shepard found himself at the realization that there were entire parts of his body that he could not feel, and what that might mean. He fought back against the panic.

"You're all there, Commander," Hackett interjected sternly, one soldier to another. "I'm not going to tell you you're not in bad shape, but you're still here."

Shepard took a deep breath, trying as much to hide his relief as gather his thoughts. "Made it to the beam. Citadel was shifting. Changing. Found a control panel. Anderson was there."

Hackett's gaze was as solid and impassive as a glacier, but Tali turned away. Had they already found out about Anderson? It was possible; with the beating Hammer took before Harbinger lifted off, it was either the beam or death. Come to think of it, he should have been thankful Tali herself was here. The thought of her stranded on the killing field throughout the horror of the Reaper's onslaught was bringing the queasy feelings back stronger than ever. And hers was the only familiar face he'd seen so far… He shut his eyes. "Illusive Man, too. Changed. Implanted. Indoctrinated."

"I see," said Hackett. He didn't sound surprised. Given his opinions of Cerberus and its leader, that seemed only natural.

"He was… more," Shepard said. Even as the details came to him in fits and starts, the memories themselves were buzzing through his head like flies, jumbled and indistinct. "Made us do things." The memory of a sound made him flinch. "I shot him."

"The Illusive Man?" Hackett asked.

Shepard shook his head, eyes screwed shut. "Anderson. Made me do it. Somehow."

"Don't blame yourself," Tali said. She came back into view, and her voice was filled with a surprising ferocity. "Not even for an instant."

Her unwavering support heartened him, even as the knowledge of what had happened ate at his conscience. He hadn't been strong enough. Not then, and not when it had mattered most. "Illusive Man wanted to control the Reapers. Talked him down. Made him see. Shot himself."

There was a long silence while that sunk in. "Go on," Hackett prompted.

"Got the arms open. Anderson… didn't make it. You called. Then…" The buzzing in his head was getting worse. It was all he could do just to assemble the words in his head. The effort of speaking was so exhausting that he couldn't bother worrying how crazy he was going to sound. "I met… the Catalyst."

"You met the Catalyst," repeated Hackett, his voice flat. Not disbelieving, but not accepting, either.

"Admiral, stop. He's exhausted. We can—"

"Not the Citadel," Shepard said, plowing forward before his strength failed. He felt the need to explain, even as every word made him want to just stop and sleep. "Ancient being. Made the Reapers. Solution…" his mind was starting to wander, despite his best efforts.

"Solution? To what?"

"Organics. Synthetics…" Shepard went on. He couldn't spare the breath to do anything else. "Destroy each other. Reapers harvest us… to stop it."

"What?" Tali blurted. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Crucible… Changed him. New solution… told me… to choose."

"Choose?" asked Hackett. "How?"

"Control Reapers. Like Illusive Man… Or Combine us… new DNA…" He knew he wasn't making sense anymore, but he was too tired. To talk, to think, to care. Too tired. "Or destroy… Reapers. Synthetics. Me…"

"You? What do you mean, destroy you?" the voice was frantic enough that it could only be Tali, but his eyes had drifted shut and refused all his calls to open again.

"Dead…" he whispered. "I should… be dead."

He felt himself slipping into darkness, back into the haze of pain and shadow. In the distance, he heard the words, but could no longer discern their source.

"He really does believe."

"So how do we tell him…?"

_Tell me what?_ he thought, and knew no more.

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***A/N*** - This chapter's title is a shout out to Malukah's Shepard tribute song of the same name.


	3. Chapter Two: Best Laid Plans

***A/N* -** Favs and alerts are appreciated. Reviews get cake.

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** Chapter Two**

**BEST-LAID PLANS**

The next time Shepard awoke, he actually felt alive. He could feel the rest of his body as something more than numbness and varying degrees of pain, and his thoughts weren't jumping around like thresher maws on stims. It was all very much a mixed blessing. Not only did the presence of the field immobilizing him register as an annoyance, he now had the mental faculties to begin processing what had happened to him.

Some of his memories were still a jumbled mess, and try as he might there were whole events, things he knew to be important, that danced away like the phantoms of a dream. And like a dream some things felt disconnected, a sense of knowing without the how or why to back it up. What did come to him with any surety did not bring him happiness. Revelations, choices, and underneath them all a gnawing sense of unease that fed on itself, growing with each passing moment.

The door to his room hissed open, and years of training roared in protest at his inability to see who was approaching him. Thankfully, that paranoia passed with the appearance of a familiar face. Or rather a familiar mask.

"Shepard. How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm going to have to get used to hearing that question," he replied. "But better."

"Tell you what, you promise to tell me the truth, and I'll promise to only ask you once a day."

"Deal." As nice as it was to talk with his wits mostly intact, pleasantries were not doing anything to dull the tension in his idle limbs, or quiet the legion of questions burning his mind like an overstressed heat sink. He sighed. "Speaking of days, how long have I been here?"

"A week. You didn't start regaining consciousness until about three days ago, though. Do you remember?"

He let that sink in for a moment. "There're flashes. Nothing concrete before you and Hackett were here."

"That was yesterday. And I'm sorry about that. I'm sure an interrogation wasn't the first thing you wanted to go through after waking up."

"I understand. You needed answers, and I was the only one with any for you." The fact of the matter was that he had questions of his own now. "Any idea when they're going to let me out?"

"You probably can't see it, but they took you off the last of the IVs while you were asleep. Seems you heal pretty quick."

"That'll change once they start feeding me hospital rations. I don't suppose you know when I'll get out of this stasis field at least?"

"Soon, I think. I'm no doctor, though."

"True. Though if I had a drive core and a mass effect field generator, you'd have me on my feet in no time. Or making precision jumps, which would be just as good."

"Glad to see your sense of humor is still intact."

"So's my two step, which I'd be happy to show you if I could stand up."

She shook her head. The shrug of her shoulders beforehand let him know the gesture was rueful, maybe a little amused. The quarians had a natural body language much like humans', only theirs was a bit more persistent in expression. He'd sometimes wondered if that was normal, or something that had come with their time spent in suits. "After we found you, your body was held together by medigel and sheer stubbornness," she said, crossing her arms and cocking her head to the side. Definitely amusement, then. "Here you are itching to be up and about a week later, and I actually believe you could do it. It may be the only thing I ever compliment Cerberus on, but they sure put you back together right."

As always, the reminder of his medical resurrection made him a little uncomfortable. Now even more so. "The cybernetics are still working?"

She shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. "You've had the best care we could find. Even killing you couldn't kill you, so I'm sure you'll be on your feet in no time."

That didn't answer his question, which only made him anxious. Not only because of what the Catalyst had told him, but because he had never known Tali to be evasive… at least not with him. Long experience had taught that being confrontational with her was not the best way to get information, so he made a new plan. "What about you? Surely an admiral of the flotilla has better things to do than hang around my sickbed."

She relaxed visibly, even as her posture shifted to annoyance. "You'd be surprised. An admiral with knowledge of geth and Reapers is indispensable. An admiral whose only command experience is commando units and small unit tactics is in the way."

"Tali, I have never once known you to be in the way. If they can't find a use for you, they're idiots." He smirked. "Want me to shout at them a bit more?"

She laughed, but there was a bit of embarrassment in her bearing, too. "Thanks, but no. I'm keeping busy. Admiral Hackett was kind enough to offer me quarters on the _Marseilles_ while you recover."

"It's good to know you've been here," he said. He meant the words, even as part of him wondered why no one else besides she and Hackett had been by to visit. A small but terrified voice in the back of his mind wondered if Tali was the only one who had survived the charge on the Conduit. To cheat death so many times only to lose so much at once did not bear consideration.

Tali's demeanor did seem to belie a disaster like that. There was _something_ she wasn't being straight with him about, but he didn't think it was plain bad news. And if she was putting on a brave face, it was one hell of a show. She was at ease, more or less, poking idly at one of the consoles on the far wall. "I haven't been the best of company, to be honest. An interspecies fleet has plenty of little technical puzzles to keep me occupied. Engineer Adams helped me set up a remote management interface in my cabin on one of his visits."

_Joker's hands fly across the controls with a look of growing panic. The _Normandy_ blazes through FTL, shuddering as the mass effect corridor collapses around it._

Shepard was glad Tali wasn't looking his way. It gave him time to master his confusion at the sudden, vivid memory, and get his breathing back under control. Things were not adding up in ways he couldn't even begin to understand, and to make any sense of it he had to keep her talking. "Well… it's good to hear that things are getting back to normal."

"Normal." She looked at him over her shoulder. "Not the word I'd choose."

"Tell me," he said earnestly. "I seem to have overslept."

She hesitated, if just for a moment, one arm hovering over the panel she'd been toying with. The moment passed, and she turned back towards him, arm swinging down as she returned to his bedside. "Where to begin? With the Reapers deactivated by the Crucible…"

_The red wave surges over the landscape, and ships as tall as skyscrapers crumble like marionettes without their strings._

"…analysis of the wreckage has every engineer in the fleet hopping around like pyjaks. Hackett's set up a collection point near your moon for what's in space. On the ground, they're just trying to keep people away from everything for now."

Shepard managed to keep his face impassive as another memory struck him. "Smart move. Even dead Reapers can be dangerous, which we know better than most."

"True. But something's different this time. The Reaper over Mnemosyne was still active, at least partially. Now, they're nothing more than hulks. No EM activity at all that we can detect."

"Even more reason to take it slow. They aren't going anywhere."

"Neither are we. And that's what I'm worried about." She crossed her arms, voice tinged with apprehension. "Whatever the Crucible did to the Reapers, it used the mass relays to propagate the effect to the rest of the galaxy, and they didn't survive the effort."

_The rings of the mass relay spin wildly, explosions erupting across the surface as incomprehensible amounts of energy strive to find a release. A beam of light shoots off into the distance, and the relay disintegrates from the strain._

Shepard blinked through the vision as Tali kept talking. "With them gone, our FTL options are limited at best. What systems we can reach at all are weeks or months away now. More than that, inter-regional communications, including the extranet, are all cut off. We've been rounding up every quantum communicator we can find, trying to piece together what's happening, but it's not enough."

"We'll figure something out."

"Until we do, the galaxy is a much bigger place than we're used to."

"We'll manage," he said, putting as much assurance into his voice as he could. Far more than he felt, in fact.

"I know." Tali sighed. She looked and sounded tired, he realized, taking a good look as she stood over his bedside. The captain in him wondered if she was getting enough rest, while the friend in him wished he could move, if only to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She looked like she could use it.

"People are going to have to get used to a whole new galaxy," he said, "but at least it doesn't have to happen overnight. The blackouts during the invasion will lessen the shock, if only because people are used to it. Communication was the first thing the Reapers hit wherever they went. Buoys, relays, satellites… Saw it firsthand when they got to Earth. It'll take us years to rebuild. Decades, maybe."

"But we'll do it. We have that chance now." She laid a hand on his shoulder.

_Who's reassuring who? _ he thought. "I guess that hasn't sunk in yet. We were so busy surviving, rebuilding seemed like… wishful thinking."

"Quarians are used to wishful thinking, I guess. We've had three hundred years to stockpile it."

"That might turn out to be a precious resource."

"We have more than enough to share. You gave us back our homeworld, Shepard. Even if we're cut off from it again, just knowing it's there waiting for us is worth more than I can say. The least we can do is help you rebuild your world in the meantime."

Shepard looked away. He didn't like it when he failed to see an angle, a habit borne of countless negotiations. Providing people with pointed reminders was one thing. Stepping on their toes was another, and not something he enjoyed. There was a reason he avoided the dance floor. "I'm sorry. I didn't even think… Knowing what happened to Earth is bad enough. I can't imagine being stranded like this, how you and the others must feel."

"It's not so bad." Her head tilted, and he could hear the smirk in her voice. "We'll get back there eventually, and I already staked a claim. I've got a Council Spectre to back me up on that."

He had to smile. "That might be one of the more creative applications of my authority I'll get the chance to use."

"Once that house is built, consider yourself invited to the party. But only if you promise to let me see Earth. Under better circumstances than a Reaper invasion, I mean."

"Promise. But it may be a while."

"I won't be breaking ground on Rannoch anytime soon… but _you_ might be surprised." There was a mischievous glint to her eyes, noticeable even through the mask.

"What do you mean?"

"Not all of us have been lying around," she teased. "Last I heard, almost ten percent of the planet has power, which is about ten times more than when we got here. The intercontinental fiber links are all restored, and they're handling most of the load for communications and coordination of the relief effort. The satellite network is slower going, mostly because of battle debris."

Even if those were just the highlights, that kind of progress staggered him. "How?"

"A lot of idle hands. We're a large fleet with no one to fight and nowhere else to go."

Every instructor in the academy had drilled into officer candidates the importance of keeping the soldiers under their command occupied. From the Roman Empire to the present day, there were few things more dangerous than men and women with lethal skills and too much time on their hands, and Shepard had taken the lessons to heart. Though he preferred to keep his crews relaxed and informal whenever possible, he did so because that camaraderie was good for bonding and keeping people sociable during training, maintenance, and other downtime activities.

What Tali was describing wasn't a dirt wall piled up one shovelful at a time by some bored legionnaires, though. They had returned to Earth with a fleet geared for war, not reconstruction. Omnitools and sheer manpower could only do so much, and most of the solar system's heavy industry had been wiped out in the first few hours of the invasion, never mind the months of occupation that followed. It wasn't in the Reapers' nature to leave anything standing for later use.

"You've managed that much in a week?"

"Well I can't take much of the credit," she demurred.

His patience for her evasiveness was wearing thin, and his lack of progress at figuring out _why_ she wasn't talking straight to him was making things worse. He was tired, frustrated, and maybe even a little claustrophobic from the restraints. "Stop being coy," he said, an edge creeping into his voice. "You're an admiral because you're a hell of an engineer, not because you're a politician. And I may be locked in this damned bed, but I don't need anyone using kid gloves on me."

Oddly, she didn't seem surprised by his outburst. She sat down on the edge of his bed, and through the lavender haze he watched the lights of her eyes narrow. She stared at him for a long time. He held her gaze without blinking, but she didn't seem intimidated in the least. In fact, she appeared almost relieved.

She seemed to come to a decision, and the change in her was as abrupt as it was startling. She looked at the door, then up to the wall behind him. Craning his neck as far as he could within the restraint field, he could just make out the room's security camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. Tali moved swiftly, going to the control panel on the wall in two quick strides. Her omnitool appeared, and her fingers flew across the interface with the same surety that had saved his life a dozen times over. With a mechanical screech, the door to the room slammed shut. She was back at his bedside in an instant, and with a few more keystrokes, the mass effect field holding him in place faded away with a low hum.

He moved his limbs hesitantly and found that everything felt stiff but normal. The dull ache remained, the soreness of recuperation he knew like a well-worn pair of boots, but it felt good to move. He sat up, rubbing his arms against the pins-and-needles feelings in his muscles. "I take it I wasn't in that field for my health."

"No. We didn't know what to do with you until we were sure what had happened, so we decided it was best to keep you here."

He glanced at the door, noting the orange hue of the panel. Security lockdown. "You seem to have changed your mind… a little."

"That's not to keep you in. That's to keep everyone else out until I can explain." She shrugged. "I'm kind of going off-script here."

"Are they afraid I'll try to break out?" He frowned, lowering himself to the floor. His legs were a little unsteady, but his balance was solid. "Should I be _trying_ to break out?"

"You have every reason to be suspicious. We just… didn't know what else to do."

"Well, you said you were going to explain," he prompted, as gently as his frayed nerves would allow. "I'm listening."

"Fair enough. I'll start with Earth. The reason we're making so much progress is thanks to the geth."

He froze in place as his mind seemed to struggle against itself. He felt like he should have been overjoyed at the notion. He should have been ecstatic at the willingness of others to help rebuild his species' shattered homeworld. Instead, his blood had turned to ice.

_You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want. Including the geth. Even you are partly synthetic._

Those words were no flash of a half-remembered dream. They were still clear as day. As fuddled as his mind was after that point, filled with vague impressions and fragmentary images, the moments from when he'd set foot on the Citadel to the flames that consumed him as the machine exploded were still vivid. The rest of it _felt_ like he knew it happened, but Anderson, the Illusive Man, the Catalyst… those memories were all too terribly real. "The geth…" he said slowly, carefully, not trusting his own voice. "Are still alive?"

"Breathe, Shepard. Yes, the geth are still alive. Just like you are."

The disjointed recollections and strange uncertainties had been bad enough. It had been one thing to suspect Tali knew something; her reactions, the partial answers, the evasions and half-truths. It had been one thing to doubt himself; what he had seen, what he had been told, and the strange visions filling in the gaps. To be confronted was a shock. There had been things he _was_ sure of, facts that were written on every bone in his body. And here she was, telling him flat-out that those certainties were wrong. The implications of that struck him. It was not that everything suddenly made sense. Far from it. It was that now it all was confusing in a way that left him, in addition to everything else, feeling hurt instead of just lost.

"Tali, what're you saying?"

"Stay calm. Stop and think."

"What are you talking about? You say the geth are helping rebuild Earth, but they're gone. I…" his voice cracked. That part of the Catalyst's choice had nearly undone him. The geth had earned a fair place in the galaxy, as much as any race. Their efforts with the quarians mere days and weeks after shooting at each other had given him one beacon of success to look back on even as the rest of his efforts seemed to fall to pieces around him. The costs of his "victories" had mounted, with friends like Mordin and Thane paying with their lives so he could convince yet another race to save themselves with them instead of dying alone for the sake of old grudges. The failures like Thessia and atrocities like Horizon had robbed him of the little hope he'd had for their future. All the while, he could look at the geth and quarians, from the caretaking of Rannoch to the little pieces of Legion that lived on in every member of the consensus, and know that maybe, just maybe, victory was more than a fool's errand.

And then he had decided to destroy them. Not just the geth, even though the Catalyst had only mentioned them explicitly; the quarians relied utterly on their suits, and many talks with Tali had reinforced the delicate engineering and programming that went into them. Who was to say what kind of effect the Crucible might have had on that symbiosis, to say nothing of other species that used technology to live outside their homeworlds, or any soul unlucky enough to be on a spaceship at the time.

He couldn't take the chance with anything else, though. He couldn't be sure he was strong enough to control the Reapers, not with his own arguments with the Illusive Man still ringing in his ears. _Are you willing to bet humanity's existence on it?_ In the end, Shepard hadn't been. Nor was he fit to play god, rewriting all life in ways even less comprehensible than the concept of destroying synthetics. That had left him with only one choice. When the Catalyst had told him he'd die too, it had seemed only fitting. Not just; there was no justice in the loss of one life for another, let alone one for untold millions. But it was all he had to give.

And then he'd found himself alive. The possibility that a similar reprieve had been granted to the geth, the quarians, the volus, and every other soul whose feet were not firmly set on a terrestrial planet friendly to their biology was too much to hope for.

"Tali, please. Tell me what's going on."

"I'm sorry, Shepard. To be honest, we still don't know what happened, and this is how people react to the unexpected." She began pacing, back and forth. Her agitation was oddly calming, like the sense of relief that came with sharing a problem. When she had been bouncing his questions away like a kinetic barrier, there had been a gap between them. Now, knowing he was not lost and utterly alone in this situation was cathartic. Or maybe the rediscovered novelty of moving his head unimpeded was just that hypnotic. "Considering none of us had any idea what was _supposed_ to happen when the Crucible activated, you'd think we wouldn't have been so surprised. I wish I could tell you that I fought against this. That it wasn't my idea. But I didn't, and I went along with it."

"I'm glad you've had a change of heart. I think."

Tali stopped pacing. "I doubted you once, when I first saw you on Freedom's Progress with Cerberus. You proved me wrong. I'm not going to make the same mistake again." She turned away, wringing her hands. "I told you once how much I… trust you, Shepard. I meant that. I still do now."

"I can see this isn't easy for you. But I need you to talk to me. Why all the suspicion?" A terrible thought occurred to him. "The Reapers really are stopped, right?"

She stared at him, her eyes as wide as he could remember seeing them. "_Keelah,_ yes. The Reapers all deactivated when the Crucible engaged, just like I said. But everything else? Waves of light, the mass relays exploding… More than a few people think this was some kind of trap. What little contact we've made with other systems confirms the Reapers have gone offline everywhere we know of, but that's not stopping the rumors and speculation. The fleets are on edge; everyone came expecting victory or death, not victory and marooning."

"If that's the case, I must not be too popular right now. Is that why you've got me stashed on an Alliance cruiser?"

She seemed confused for a moment, then shook her head. "Actually, no. The news that you survived is the only thing that's kept some of the factions in check. The krogan would have probably tried conquering the planet already, but Wrex threatens everyone who gets out of line that when he's done with them he'll give what's left to _you_. And Aria put down a Blood Pack mutiny attempt just by splashing a holo of your face on the ringleader's private terminal." He could hear the smirk on her face when she added, "I helped with that one."

"If I had known my comatose body was that intimidating I would have had Wrex knock me out before we tried talking to the dalatrass."

"My point is we moved you here to keep you from getting mobbed while we figured out what to do."

"I still don't know what all the fuss is about. I got to the Citadel, opened the arms, set off the Crucible. I thought that was the whole idea."

"That's just it." She took a deep breath, holding his gaze intently. "You really did take a hit from Harbinger before you made it to the beam. But you never made it to the Citadel."

"I…" He reeled backwards, as though her words had been fired by a mass accelerator. He found the edge of the bed and managed to sit back down before his legs gave out. "I got back up. Didn't I? I know I got back up."

"No, Shepard. Listen to me." She reached a hand out towards him, but stopped when he flinched away. "We found you on Earth."

"But you said the Citadel's arms opened."

"They did." Her voice grew very soft, and her gaze fell to the floor. "But you and I weren't the ones to do it."

"But… I was _there_." This wasn't just being told the geth would be destroyed, and then being told they were alive. This was too different. Too wrong. Too much. "I _saw_."

"We know your memory was… modified somehow. We know what you saw. We know you believed it. It's why we tried to keep you here until we could tell you the truth. Believe me. _Trust_ me. Please."

"How? How do you know? You weren't there…" But if he wasn't there either, then… "How?"

"Javik. When we found you he read your memories, and was able to tell us about some of what you remembered."

"What I remembered… How could I remember it if it didn't happen?"

"We don't know. But think. Really think: about the things besides what happened on the Citadel."

"I saw the Reapers deactivating… the mass relays exploding… the _Normandy_…"

"Yes. You remember things that you couldn't possibly have seen. Focus on that. And what you think you saw on the Citadel was no different."

"What you're saying…" He wanted to believe her; that much he could admit. He would rather put his faith in Tali than some childlike phantom. But no one, however trustworthy, could just walk up and say that something he saw didn't happen. He felt the room starting to spin, and shook his head, forcing himself to breathe. "I trust you with my life. But you're telling me—"

He was interrupted when the door behind Tali gave a discontented buzz. It began beeping rapidly, and the display shifted from orange to green. It hissed open, and Shepard was glad he was already sitting down.

He also realized that either Tali was telling him the truth, or he was beyond saving.

"She's right, Commander. But sometimes seeing is believing."

"_Anderson?_"

"In the flesh," said a man who was not dead.

"That was fast," Tali said, a little nonplussed. "I put my best encryption on that override."

Shepard knew he was gawking, but was beyond caring. "How… Admiral, why didn't you just show up in the first place?"

"And if I _had_ showed up out of the blue? You're tough, Shepard, but even a Spectre isn't ready to see ghosts. Mind you, this wasn't exactly the way we wanted to warm you up for my grand re-entrance, either." He gave Tali a look. She shuffled nervously, avoiding his gaze. "Miss, you and I are going to have words about sticking to plans."

"The plan wasn't working," she shot back. "I can't believe any of us thought we could lie to him like that."

"You did. You volunteered for this, as I recall," he countered mildly. "It doesn't matter now. Of course, jumping the gun is going to get you hell from the others. They wanted to be here, after all."

"Others?" Shepard asked. He was starting to feel lost again, though this time his delirium had a rather positive edge.

"We had it all planned out. The short version is we'd bring you around slowly. Give you little details until you were able to work things out for yourself. We should have known better than to try and stage a surprise party for a man trained in ambush tactics."

"I think I understand your reasoning. Right now I'm hoping somebody caught the IFF of the freighter that ran me over."

"We've got a few more surprises for you yet. Not right now, though. You've had a long week, and that after a long war."

"It's going to take me a while to process all this," Shepard admitted. He was bursting with questions, but exhaustion and relief were starting to edge in as well. However quickly the process was going, he was still healing, and his body was telling him he needed rest. "Making heads or tails of what happened and what didn't happen… It would've been easier if it all were or weren't true, instead of just parts."

"It would certainly make a lot more sense that way," Anderson agreed. "Of course, so would life in general. We've got a long road to walk yet, but I know you can handle it. And you won't have to do it alone."

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

***A/N* -** The cake is a lie.


	4. Chapter Three: Future Imperfect

**Chapter Three**

**FUTURE IMPERFECT**

Anderson was true to his word. Early the next day, Shepard started getting visitors.

"Y'know, Commander, I hear you've started dreaming about me. We might need to have a talk."

"Joker!"

The pilot limped through the door, and every shambling step was a sight for sore eyes. "You're not gonna get all misty on me are you? I know I ain't pretty, but I've never made an N7 cry before." The grin plastered on his bestubbled face spoke volumes.

"Call me crazy, I must be happy to see you."

"Me? Oh, now I know there's something wrong."

"You're right. For a second I thought you were EDI."

"Impaired vision is a common side effect of major head trauma," the AI supplied from beside Joker, voice styled in her usual helpful deadpan. Shepard did not fail to notice her and Joker's hands join casually as they took up two of the chairs next to his bed. "I am prepared to notify the medical staff immediately if you are experiencing physical malfunctions."

"That was a joke."

EDI actually smirked. "Yes, Jeff. Of course, jokes can also be true."

"No malfunctions here," Shepard assured them.

"Not that he'd admit if there were," Tali said, a note of exasperation in her voice. "He was doing sit-ups when I got here this morning."

"You don't make it through ICT on genetic engineering alone."

"Oh, is _that_ why Vega keeps converting more and more of the armory into a weight room?"

"You're not jealous are you?"

"Of muscles? 'course not. The last time I looked at a dumbbell I think it fractured something."

"Anyway, it's hard not to feel like I have some serious rust to work off after being strapped to a bed for a week."

"Getting shot by a Reaper is no flesh wound, Commander," Admiral Anderson said mildly. He was trying, with little success, to bite back a smile. Though barely middle-aged by modern standards, there may have been some envy present as well. His own jaunt through Interplanetary Combatives Training was a distant memory. Not a fond one, either, though certainly proud… but nothing in those courses had taught him how to take a blast from a Reaper and be sitting up a week later.

"I think better when I'm moving," Shepard explained. "And I've got a lot to think about at the moment."

"I'll say," Joker groused. "If you figure out why you pictured me as cowardly enough to hightail it away from a warzone after leaving you behind to die, let me know."

It was not entirely meant as a joke, but that was only because Joker seemed honestly hurt by the possibility his commander felt he had abandoned them on the surface. As such, the statement stung Shepard more than he wanted to admit. His hallucinations of the _Normandy_ made even less sense than his other memories. Exhausted as he was, he had spent most of the last night restless and agitated, trying to make sense of the last few days. The conclusions had not helped his insomnia, and so Tali had found him in the morning, still trying to work himself to sleep. "I've got to wrap my head around some things. That included. Still, it's good to see you both."

"You'd have seen us yesterday, but the Admiral pretty much said he'd have our hides if we came in without his say-so."

"We'd gone far enough off-script for one day. No offense, Shepard, but you seemed pretty shaken by the time I came in."

He shrugged. "I was. No harm in admitting it. Of course, now I can look forward to that moment of weakness making it into Joker's tell-all autobiography."

"You kidding, Commander? That's not even close to being one of the juicy bits. We were right outside the door yesterday, after all."

"Really?"

"Of course. EDI's the one who got past the override."

"That explains how you got the door open so fast," said Tali.

"Your security encryption was most impressive," EDI said, giving the quarian a nod of honest respect. "Especially given the time you possessed to implement it. Were I not familiar with your work through modifications to the _Normandy_'s systems, it might have taken me significantly longer to bypass."

"So, six seconds instead of five?" Joker quipped.

EDI considered that for a moment. "Perhaps seven. The recursive algorithms were quite ingenious."

"Show-off. And I bet you walked the whole way with me just so you could be sure everyone had time to show up and see you in action."

"I have no need to display my abilities in a way that would garner extra attention," the AI replied, a little indignantly. "My procrastination was primarily to allow more time for Tali to interact with Shepard and acclimate him to the situation."

"Wait," Joker said, confused. "All Anderson said when he paged us in the mess yesterday was to get up here on the double. How did you know Tali was spilling the beans to the commander?"

"I considered that scenario to be the most likely outcome throughout the planning stages."

"And you're just telling us this now?"

"Forgive me, Admiral. Though my calculations were proven correct in this instance, I do not possess a sufficient sample of data to provide contrary input to plans reliant on emotional interaction."

"We can be unpredictable, EDI," Shepard said ruefully. "You can say it."

"Indeed, Commander. In fact, the greatest variable I encountered was the time it would require for Tali to convince you of her sincerity. She has frequently theorized that you possess an abnormally thick cranium."

The choking sound coming from Tali was not one Shepard could ever recall a quarian environmental suit making.

"She may not be wrong. I have head-butted a krogan and lived to talk about it."

"Was it Wrex?" Joker wondered. "No, better question: are there vids?"

"What happens on Tuchanka, stays on Tuchanka. You've got enough dirt on me as it is."

"Right, right. I get it, I'm just the pilot. I'm supposed to sit quietly in my chair, ready at a moment's notice to pull your ass out of the fire when you start blowing up whatever planet, station, or asteroid you're on at the moment."

"You're never going to let me live down that evac call on Therum, are you?"

"You asked me to land in a volcano," said Joker. "Not a chance."

"Has anyone ever told you how insufferable you are?" Shepard wondered, without rancor.

"I consider that reminder to be a part of Jeff's regular maintenance," EDI informed them. "It does not appear to have had any effect on his behavior as yet."

"Keep trying. I'm sure it'll take eventually."

"I'm completely unappreciated in my own time," Joker lamented, shaking his head at the ceiling. "Come on, EDI. I think it's time we got back to the _Normandy_. If I'm gonna get browbeat it may as well be from someplace where the seats have cushions." He stood to leave, giving his commander a sharp salute as he did.

Shepard returned the gesture, and figured smiles didn't spoil the effect if both of them were doing it. "Take good care of her until I get back, Joker."

"Aye aye, sir."

The door had barely closed behind the pilot and his companion before the intercom chimed. "_Bridge to Admiral Anderson._"

"Anderson here."

"_Sir, we have a transmission from the _Orizaba._ Admiral Hackett says there's a report from Major Alenko. He asked for you to contact him from the briefing room._"

"On my way." With brisk nods to Shepard and Tali, he left. The door hissed shut, leaving only the sounds of idle medical machinery and the faint background hum of a ship at station keeping.

Shepard let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Kaidan's all right?"

"He's fine. They have him leading salvage teams on Earth. I'm sure he'd have been here otherwise."

"I don't suppose anyone else is stashed outside the door?"

"Not that I know of. The admiral may have revoked my conspiracy clearance, though."

"I appreciate what you did yesterday, Tali."

She gave a bitter laugh. "The part where I lied to your face, or the part where I had to convince you that you'd hallucinated saving the galaxy?"

"None of that, now. I may still be trying to figure out which way is up, but what you did, you did to protect me. That much I _am_ sure of."

"Thanks." She did brighten a bit, but her tone said she didn't quite believe him.

There was something strange about the way she was acting. She seemed unsure, almost wary. He had a sinking suspicion that he knew why, but if he was right, there weren't any easy solutions. For either of them. And right now, she looked almost as tired as he felt. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm supposed to be the one asking you that question."

"You used your one for today already, remember?" It had been the first thing out of her mouth, when she had arrived to find him sweating through the set of fatigues he had swiped from the closet.

"You think I'm going to buy 'fine'? The deal only counts if you tell me the truth."

"The truth? The truth is I'm terrified. Not because of what everyone's telling me. Not because I remember things that couldn't have happened or that I couldn't have seen. Not even because the whole galaxy is sitting on the edge of a chasm that nobody knows how to get across, and we can barely shout at each other across the abyss. It doesn't even faze me that I can practically hear the eggshells cracking whenever people set foot in this room." Tali held his gaze while he vented, and she still didn't flinch when he threw himself into the chair next to her. "Hell, I'm not even scared that I think I know why. No, what scares me is that no one seems to trust me to handle the real bad news they're sitting on… and I'm terrified that they might be right."

"You've been through a lot," Tali said sadly. "You've done more than any of us, and suffered more than any of us to do it. You deserve a break… a happy ending… but we don't have one to give you."

"I've never expected any of you to give me anything. Every one of you has earned my friendship, and I hope that you've all stood by me because I've earned yours as well."

"Don't _ever_," she growled, with a ferocity that took him aback, "doubt that."

With his anger gone, Shepard felt deflated. He leaned forward, studying his hands clasped between his knees. "Then tell me the truth now, Tali."

To her credit, she didn't hesitate. "It wasn't just the mass relays that were destroyed when the Crucible activated. Whatever energy they transmitted to deactivate the Reapers started with the Citadel. It was destroyed, too."

It was just as he feared. Just as he'd seen. "If I didn't make it to the Citadel, someone did. Someone got those arms open for the Crucible. Who?"

"I'm so sorry, Shepard. It was Liara." Her voice, already soft, grew softer. "And Garrus."

He nodded. The uncertainty had been worse than the knowledge was. That was cold comfort, but it was something. He felt calm. Or perhaps just… numb. "I'm sorry, too. For you."

"I've already had time to mourn," she replied. "And plenty of things to keep my mind occupied. But you…"

"I think a part of me expected this. Part of me knew there would be some faces I'd never see again. I had said my goodbyes, and when the charge started, when Harbinger stood there picking us off, I think I may have even thought that was it."

"Even you, huh?" There was a bit of surprise in Tali's voice.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course."

"It happened more often than you'd think. One thing kept me going, though."

"What was that?"

"I promised Liara that I'd always come back." He smiled wistfully. His vision was going a little fuzzy, and he blinked to clear his eyes. "I never did make her do the same."

"Garrus spent the last month worrying that you'd do something 'crazy and heroic,'" she confided. "I guess I should have been more worried about him."

"I told him to remember to duck," Shepard recalled. The conversation in the bombed-out London office building was suddenly quite vivid. _There's no Shepard without Vakarian. _"I suppose he listened, if he made it up there."

"He and Liara were right behind you at the head of the charge when…" she trailed off. "He didn't let her stop. They were the first ones to the beam. The only ones, as far as we know."

"What happened?"

"Admiral Hackett ordered the fleet to try and stall Harbinger when it broke for the surface. Rear Admiral Lynn chased it all the way into the atmosphere with one of your dreadnoughts after he saw it land next to the Conduit. Harbinger must have been so preoccupied with the ground teams that it never saw the danger until it was too late. The explosion shut down the beam."

One railgun slug at 0.013c could level a city. A dreadnought at one kilometer per second hit with a hundred times that force. "How did it not destroy all of London, never mind Hammer?"

"Harbinger took the brunt of it. And it deserved every joule, the _bosh'tet_. In Joker's words, it was 'the damnedest bit of piloting since humans started flapping their arms.'"

And now that pilot, along with the Reaper, Admiral Lynn, and the other 4000 crew of an _Everest_-class dreadnought, were gone. It was a sobering piece of perspective. How many thousands had died with Sword and Hammer? How many millions on Earth? How many billions across the galaxy?

No matter how many times he asked himself those questions, though, all the dead had but two faces, hurting him in two very different ways.

"Come here, Shepard." He felt two arms wrap around him. He returned the hug fiercely, but Tali didn't make a sound of complaint; she was stronger than she looked. He had learned that on the _Alarei_, what seemed like a lifetime ago. The two people who would have been there for either of them were nowhere to be found, but at least they had each other.

They broke apart, and he swiped at his eyes. "Thanks," he managed, his voice thick.

"I owed you one. And don't worry, I won't tell Joker."

He had to laugh, because it was the better of two alternatives. "I appreciate that." He took a few more steadying breaths. "No more surprises, right? No more secrets?"

"Not from me."

He gave her a grateful smile. "Thanks."

They were quiet for a long moment. Tali shifted a bit in her chair. "Do you want some time to yourself?"

"I've had too much time to myself lately. I'd just like to talk."

She looked at him askance. "I don't know, I think the _Normandy_'s engine could always use some more cleaning. But if you insist…"

"Good to know where I stand," he said with a smirk. "How are the salvage efforts coming?"

"Slowly. It takes two dreadnoughts or half-a-dozen cruisers a few hours just to tow one _Sovereign_-class Reaper out of Earth's gravity well. It's incredible how well they maneuvered, considering. If we can figure out how to reverse engineer a drive core even half as powerful as the ones they use, it will make the _Normandy_ look like an ion thruster relic."

"And I'm sure Joker will still figure out how to make it bank in a vacuum."

"We're years from anything practical. Even so, without the mass relays it may be the only way to restore any kind of galactic community. Or at least one even close to the way it was before."

"What about the relays themselves? Anything left of them that we can use, maybe even rebuild with?"

"Bits and pieces, probably, but I'm not holding my breath after the overload they suffered. You had to hit one with a planetoid to destroy it, but the Crucible put so much power through the Charon Relay that it just… fell apart. From what we've heard, the same thing happened to every relay in the network."

"Even the dormant relays?"

"As far as we know."

Shepard leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath. "As far as we've come, we've explored barely one percent of the galaxy. It makes you wonder… how many other spacefaring races were there that we hadn't met yet? There could be whole other societies, as big as the Council even, or bigger. Were they fighting the Reapers, too?"

"Probably. We saw Reapers moving through the relays at will, even uncharted ones."

"As much as they threw at us, to think that there could have been a hundred times more, purging the parts of the galaxy we'd never even seen…"

"And you stopped them, too," she pointed out. "I'm glad."

"So am I. Maybe we'll see some of those new worlds one day. A few new faces, if we're lucky. Space is a lonely enough place as it is."

"You understand that better than anyone else I know," Tali remarked. "My people live in space, but with so many of us packed together, even quarians forget how big it really is."

"I may come from Earth, but I've lived in space all my life. It's my home, too, and it always will be. No matter how far we go, no matter how long it takes us to get there, there will always be more to see."

"_Keelah se'lai_," Tali whispered.

"_Keelah se'lai_," Shepard agreed. They both grew quiet again for a long moment. "It really is over, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. But it's also just beginning." A three-fingered hand reached out and wrapped around his. "They would have loved to see it."

"Yeah. They would."


	5. Chapter Four: Awakening

**Chapter Four**

**AWAKENING**

Kaidan Alenko had never been afraid of the dark. Spending time exploring dead Reapers would probably change that.

He switched his comm to the correct channel for their shuttle pilot. "Cortez, you ready for pickup?"

The reply over his headset was shot through with static. "_Five minutes out, Major. I just picked up team six to relieve you; waiting on Harvest Control for the next spot in the queue._"

"Roger that. We'll meet you at the landing site." Alenko keyed off his mic, and turned to the other two members of Harvest Team One. This squad he commanded personally, in addition to his responsibilities of operational oversight. "All right, we're done here. Finish your scans and move out." The sooner they could get out of the absolute blackness of yet another inactive Reaper vessel, the better.

"Major, I feel more time at this location would be invaluable."

"Noted, doctor," he replied with all the patience he could muster. "We're still leaving."

Dr. Ellik Valus was the specialist of his team, and had made frequent appeals for longer stays inside the derelicts. There was no lack of scope to his arguments – Valus was a salarian, after all – but no matter how many ways he elaborated on the inefficiency of such brief sorties, Alenko always had the same answer for him. He had long ago given up on that answer being accepted.

"I may have found indications of the presence of a tertiary power grid. With a more thorough reading of this structure, I could—"

"Mark it for the next team. Our orders are clear: no more than two hours inside for every twenty-four hour period. We're at," he glanced at the chrono readout in the corner of his helmet's HUD, "one hour and fifty-two minutes."

"There are no indications whatsoever that the wreckage is still capable of transmitting indoctrination signals," Valus argued, blinking as the lamp on Alenko's helmet came to bear, along with the major's best glare.

"Our mission isn't to test that theory," he countered flatly.

The scientist opened his mouth to protest further, but a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. "We will continue this discussion, doctor," the third member of their team said, two pairs of golden eyes fixed on the much smaller biped in his grasp, "_outside_."

The salarian swallowed, and nodded. Javik offered him a grin in response. It might have been their surroundings shading the expression, but Alenko decided "predatory" was almost an understatement.

They made their way back outside, every inch of the Reaper's interior just as dark and quiet as it had been on their trip in the other direction. That was much the same as the dozen other hulls – destroyers, capital ships, bio-reprocessing factories, even a Hades cannon – they had surveyed over the past week. It had all served to reinforce the very first conclusion Kaidan had reached on this assignment: the only thing more unsettling than the innards of a live Reaper was the inside of a dead one.

Regardless, his peace of mind was not their primary objective. Reconnaissance was. They were to verify each piece of Reaper technology was EM-dark, map what they could of the interiors, and move on. There were thousands of Reaper structures all over Earth's surface, from fallen warships to the facilities of grim purpose deployed in the aftermath of the invasion. Each and every one of them had to be scouted for life forms and surveyed for active technology. And this was just a precursor to calling in engineers for demolition and removal. "Mapped and scrapped," as Vega had put it.

As urgent as it was to start getting the wreckage off the planet, or at least out of the population centers, nobody wanted to risk indoctrination. Still, Dr. Valus was not wrong: there were no signs that the dead Reapers were still capable of influencing organics. Hell, if they were, nobody was even sure if the precautions they were taking would make a difference. The fact that they still knew so little about the Reapers' most insidious weapon made it all the more frightening.

Sadly, there were few alternatives. Drones had proven woefully ineffective. The Reapers may have been dead, but whatever they were made of still played hell with wireless communications, including the remote control of unmanned vehicles. To make things worse, something about the material also frazzled the VIs of the automated units, and the ones that didn't get lost and go dark crashed themselves into walls. Of course, the layout of the vessels may also have had something to do with it. More than a few of his teams had gotten turned around, and nobody seemed anxious to get themselves lost in the labyrinthine bodies of kilometer-tall mind-controlling war machines. Kaidan sympathized. He knew in his head that the Reapers were dead, but something in his gut made him feel he was still being watched the instant he set foot inside one.

Returning to daylight did wonders for his disposition. They emerged from the hulk, and even the smoky grey skies of London were a sight for sore eyes. The sun was almost fully risen, though the haze from the fires that had burned uncontrolled for the last few months made it seem darker than it was. He removed his helmet and allowed himself a breath of almost-fresh air before turning to address the lieutenant coming to greet him.

"Major, sir," the young officer saluted. "How far did you get?"

Alenko returned the salute. "Branch nine off the main corridor." With a flick of his wrist and a few keystrokes, he copied the recordings of their expedition between their omnitools.

Dr. Valus was already giving a hurried summary of his findings and theories to his team six counterpart. Every team was comprised of two soldiers and a specialist. Without a single active hostile reported, the soldiers' main job was to ensure the scientists didn't get themselves lost or completely ignore their two hour limits. The specialists ran what scans and tests they could in the time they were allotted on site, and otherwise worked together back at their base camp in the Blue Zone.

That, Kaidan knew, was where the real fruits of their labor were ripening. A veritable beehive of activity, the best minds the fleet collected and collated data, laying the groundwork for everything from demolition and removal to the reverse engineering efforts that were likely to occupy galactic science for the next century at the very least. They were retrieving a wealth of information about Reaper technology with just cursory surface scans. That was fortunate, since not a single gram of material was to be removed from the wrecks themselves. The last thing they wanted was another Object Rho.

Soldiers, scientists, shuttles and pilots, plus the full-time base personnel tracking progress through every wreck and marking the sites yet to be surveyed; these were the people who comprised Operation Harvest. And for better or worse, they were Alenko's responsibility.

A regiment-scale detachment was nothing to sneer at for a major's second command posting. As a multinational effort with troops from most every species in the coalition fleet, it made for quite a challenge. His experience with the Alliance Biotics Division hadn't provided much in the way of preparation, and he was learning a whole new level of appreciation for Shepard's effortless handling of even a small interspecies team. If the salarians weren't chafing at the slow progress, the krogan were upset at the lack of things to shoot at. The turians had trouble adapting to the comparatively lax discipline standards of the other races, and the humans… well, most of them were shell-shocked at seeing Earth in its current state. It had been a juggling act from the word go, but they had jobs to do, with all the attendant challenges.

For beings who claimed to espouse order, there was absolutely no pattern or consistency in the design of any Reaper structures, at least to organic minds. Even among ships or buildings that appeared to share a purpose, no two were exactly alike. Nations unto themselves, indeed; they could teach the Council a thing or two about bureaucracy.

With the relief team briefed and already marching into the fallen destroyer they had just left, Alenko followed Javik and Valus into the waiting Kodiak. He grabbed a hand bar and leaned against the frame of the cockpit door. "Take us back to the Blue Zone, Lieutenant."

"Aye aye, sir," Steve Cortez acknowledged. "Anything exciting on this stop?"

"Par for the course," he said, as the pilot went through his pre-flight checks. "Walls. Ceilings. Even a few floors, at least to my untrained eyes."

"So, productive, then?"

"For the doctor, yes. For the rest of us it was quiet, which was just as good."

"Hope you enjoyed it, sir. If the gossip I heard from team six on the way out here was any indication, you've got some fun waiting for you back at base."

Alenko frowned. That, too, would be par for the course. And if Cortez thought his daily two-hour excursions into Reaper wrecks were an escape of sorts… he would be right. "Anything I should be worried about?"

"The usual flare-ups," Cortez replied over the pop of thrusters pushing the Kodiak off the ground. "Taylor's kept a lid on most of it, but I think he had a problem of his own for you."

Despite his checkered employment history and lack of a current military commission, Jacob Taylor had come highly recommended off of Project Crucible to serve as Alenko's XO on Operation Harvest. He had lived up to his reputation, and if he had something for Kaidan's attention, the major knew it wasn't going to be trivial. "Any specifics?"

"Something about findings at the most recent survey sites. Sorry, sir. I've barely been on the ground at base long enough to take on supplies, let alone pick up a good load of fresh scuttlebutt."

Alenko gave the pilot a once-over as he leveled the shuttle off at cruising altitude. Cortez hadn't so much as whispered a complaint in Kaidan's hearing, but tanned skin couldn't hide the dark circles under his eyes.

Ground transportation was still in shambles, and the Reapers hadn't left much of anything with a mass effect core intact during their invasion and occupation, so the fleet's shuttles were the primary logistical tool of the ground forces. Few enough craft and pilots had survived the hectic hours of Hammer's landing and assault, and on their shoulders now rested a huge burden of transport and supply for both the military and civilian populations. As important as Operation Harvest was, ferrying them around was not the shuttles' only responsibility. Case in point, there was barely enough room for them to sit among stacks of MREs earmarked for one refugee camp or another.

"When's the last time you had a break?" Alenko asked.

"Scouts found another group of civilians hiding on the channel coast overnight. They needed supplies, so I took a shift. Don't worry, sir, I'm wide awake."

"I don't doubt it. Grab some rack time once we land, though."

Cortez shook his head. "Like I said, not tired."

"That's an order, Lieutenant. We're in this for the long haul, and the last thing we need is good people burning themselves out."

"Aye aye, sir," the pilot acknowledged, without enthusiasm. "You shouldn't waste worry on me, though. I'm not gonna let a few long days at the office get me down. We both know people who are worse off."

"Yeah," the major admitted. "I guess so."

"Have you heard anything yet?"

Kaidan's mouth formed a thin line. "He's awake."

Cortez was surprised enough that he actually took his eyes off the controls. "Already? I knew the commander got some serious work done on him by Cerberus, but…"

"You don't know the half of it. Neither do I, really. He doesn't talk about it much."

"He'll be running circles around us both again in no time."

"Maybe." He didn't trouble Cortez with his real thoughts on the matter, but he also caught the dark look Javik was giving him from the other side of the cabin. Shepard's survival from a close brush with a Reaper beam was common knowledge. His supposed "memories" of reaching the Citadel and deciding the fate of the galaxy were not.

Those worries would keep, however, as Cortez dipped the nose of the shuttle into a gentle descent. They were approaching the Blue Zone, the main Alliance base for supply, patrol, and recovery efforts in the European region. Covering ten square kilometers in the heart of London, centered on Westminster, from here thousands of personnel formed the beating heart of the effort to restore Earth to glory.

Cortez brought the shuttle down in a landing zone near the bank of the Thames, just off the Palace of Westminster itself. While the old building was remarkably intact, most operations were being run from large collections of prefabricated structures, and Harvest's command post was no different. While the drab grey box Alenko walked towards after disembarking from the shuttle was not much to look at, it contained all the communications gear, computing power, and work space they could ask for. With an independent power supply and a self-contained plumbing and waste reprocessing system that saved them from reliance on Earth's slowly recovering infrastructure, it was a veritable palace compared to what most people on the planet had access to.

It was early, still shy of 0800. A good portion of the staff and soldiers were still in their bunks or one of the mess halls, but the command center inside was already buzzing with activity. Banks of monitors lined the walls, while a large central table hosted a three dimensional real-time display of the greater London area. One of the very first satellites deployed to replace the network that had been annihilated by the Reapers had been tasked to their use, and it had made the effort of finding, logging, and tracking the buildings and wreckage that needed their attention infinitely easier.

Alenko's arrival barely even registered in the noise of machinery and conversation, which he knew was a good thing. If everyone had to stop what they were doing to talk to him whenever he entered a room, then he wasn't doing his job as a commanding officer. One person, however, did appear to be seeking his attention.

"Major, welcome back." Jacob Taylor may have elected to remain ex-Alliance, but you couldn't have told that from his salutes. He had even traded in his old jumpsuit for a set of blue and grey Marine fatigues, though they were missing any kind of rank insignia.

"Mr. Taylor." He returned the salute. Some of the pricklier soldiers in the CP had made noise about the impropriety of saluting a man who was technically a civilian, but Taylor's professionalism – and his credentials, once the rumor mill had been given a chance to grind – had won them over quickly enough. "Sitrep?"

"Just getting warmed up this morning. Eight squads in the field at the moment. Team twenty-two took some fire checking a reprocessing plant on the east end. No casualties, and that's the only hot spot we've had since 1630 yesterday."

"Guerillas or looters?"

"Neither, actually. Just a few angry folks trying to find family taken during the occupation." While there were no hostile Reaper forces to contend with, that did not mean than the Harvest teams were completely safe. Outside of the military channels, global communications was largely reduced to word of mouth, and news that the war was over was slow to spread. When combined with a population that had just suffered a full-scale invasion from an alien force widely known to be capable of mind control, it was no surprise that some holdouts were still operating on a "shoot first and ask questions later" basis.

Less numerous than than the ill-informed resistance fighters, but also much less sympathetic, were the opportunists with more firepower than sense. That there were people who actually felt it was a good idea to try and scavenge through Reaper wreckage was mind-boggling, but it took more than the collapse of the intergalactic economy to put an end to greed. For all the effort Operation Harvest was putting into securing the sites they had visited, and even some of those they hadn't started surveying yet, there was the very real threat of Reaper contraband making its way around.

The sooner they had a solid answer on the indoctrination problem the better, Alenko knew. Of course, that was why there was a whole independent research detachment, separate from his command, dedicated to that particular question.

"Any other excitement while I was in the field?"

"Nothing else involving bullets, but team eight did find another husk pile."

"Where at?"

"Outside a downed destroyer, west of here."

"How many is that now?"

"This is the fourth."

Alenko frowned. "And how many husks this time?"

"Almost a hundred. The largest group yet."

The world was filled with the corpses of Reaper ground troops. Conservative estimates on their numbers usually started at the one billion mark, and you could barely walk ten paces in London without stepping over a dead husk. The Crucible's wave had shut down all Reaper technology on contact, from their largest ships to their individual grunts, and everything was still lying where it had fallen. Two days ago, however, the Harvest teams had begun noting oddities at some survey sites.

They were finding collections of husks, their bodies lying in closely-packed groups instead of the scattered leftovers from the Battle of London. It was more confusing than worrisome at this point, but they had no explanations or theories as to the cause. Not a single piece of Reaper tech had shown even the ability to reactivate, so it wasn't just wishful thinking to say the husks were not gathering on their own. Soldiers knew to steer clear of anything with Reaper tech until a Harvest squad could arrive. Civilians were a possibility; husks had been humans once, but if it was people gathering bodies to pay respects, why were they being left out in the open? The simplest answer would be Reaper strongpoints or garrisons, but then why had they just started finding them? And why only husks?

"I'm due to report to Hackett at 0930. I think he needs to know about this. Put together a list of the sites and any relevant details," Alenko instructed.

"It won't take long to put together," replied Taylor. "I'll take a quick look back through the deployment reports. We might have missed some smaller groups that fit the pattern."

"Good idea. I'll see if we can get Anderson in on the call, too. Maybe the resistance noticed something like this before."

* * *

Shepard managed to get himself to sleep early in the afternoon. Whether it was his body rebelling against the added abuse of a disrupted sleep cycle, or just the culmination of two very mentally stressful days, rest was not so easy to come by.

His dreams were dark and shapeless, breaking his slumber into fitful spurts. Pure exhaustion kept him rolling back over and closing his eyes again. That, and Tali's threats to return with a shotgun loaded with tranquilizers. Or just a shotgun.

Some hours later, what brought an end to his rather restless attempts at rest was hunger. He had been off of IV nutrition for more than a day now, and his body was insisting on something more substantial than water. He donned a fresh set of fatigues and made his way to the mess. It had been a while since he'd been aboard a _Washington_-class cruiser, but he found his way without much issue.

It was late enough that most of the crew had already been through for dinner, leaving a few men and women scattered around the benches. Some were just crew enjoying a quieter evening meal, while others were stragglers from dinner still absorbed in conversation. One group looked to be playing cards. The kitchen on a ship this size never really closed, but despite the return of his appetite Shepard didn't find himself craving anything more substantial than some soup and bread.

Tray in hand, he found a spot at one of the empty tables and sat down. He drew enough looks to know he'd been recognized, but these soldiers were disciplined enough to stick to giving him respectful nods and surreptitious glances. He returned the former, ignored the latter, and ate his meal in solitude. At least for a little while.

"What kind of feast is that, Shepard? If this is how humans treat your war heroes, I may have to make your honorary krogan status permanent."

Shepard looked up at the sound of the familiar voice, and immediately felt a grin coming on. "I'm not sure I'd want to see one of your feasts. A hero isn't supposed to fight his way through a victory banquet, and some of the dishes might wind up eating _me_."

"Hah! I figured you humans didn't know how to have a real celebration." Urdnot Wrex threw himself down onto the bench across from the commander, rattling the whole table in the process. Alliance navy mess halls weren't designed to accommodate krogan battlemasters in full armor. "You'll have to settle for free drinks, I guess. If you try and get through half of what people are going to be buying you for the rest of your life, you won't make it to fifty. That's even if you manage to avoid all the ryncol!"

"Must be nice having redundant livers."

"Pretty sure those developed when krogan civilization started forming marriage customs."

"Speaking of which, how's life treating you, Wrex? Any word from Tuchanka?"

Wrex grunted an affirmative, nodding. "One pleasant side effect of having the STG and the turians breathing down our necks for a few centuries. We've got half a dozen quantum communicators linked between here and the DMZ." He chuckled. "And those are just the ones they told us about."

"How are things back there?"

"That depends. Is it really a coup if the leader being deposed is stranded on another planet with most of the army?"

"I suppose _that_ would depend on who's doing the deposing."

"Hrmph. Bakara, of course. She's already set up some kind of council to make decisions while I'm gone. She says I'm welcome to join in on the sessions whenever I can." He shook his head. "Just thinking about that much talk makes my head hurt."

"Look on the bright side, Wrex. The DMZ is practically on our doorstep. You could be back in just a couple years, even without the relays."

"A couple years can be a long time, even for krogan. If we had the ships to do it ourselves, I'd already have sent most of my troops off in that direction. We're not much good at rebuilding things, as you might have noticed. And there's not a whole hell of a lot else to do here…" He gave Shepard a grin, curling the scars over the right side of his face. "Since somebody went and killed all the Reapers already."

His smile in return was rather forced. "What have you heard?"

"Heard? Pfah. I heard you took a Reaper beam to the face, and now you're sitting here. I don't give a damn about the rest of it. We're here, and the Reapers aren't. All I need to know." His gaze narrowed a bit, and his next words were surprisingly mild. "I am sorry about Liara, though. Garrus, too, I suppose. I'll miss that pyjak."

Shepard nodded, finding the act of stirring his soup quite interesting all of a sudden. "I appreciate that."

"Enough of my blabbering. Is there any actual food in this place?"

"I'm afraid the chefs probably haven't had much experience with krogan dishes. They tend to work unarmed, for starters."

"Pity. I suppose I might try some of your Earth food. There was one dish that sounded almost edible; one of your men in engineering was going on about it. I think he called it haggis."

"We find ourselves together planetside, I'll treat you to some," Shepard promised. "Just don't expect me to eat it, too."

"More for me! So when are they going to let you off this barge? You sure don't look like you're going to die anytime soon."

"Not long, I hope. I've been here a week, and even being conscious for just three days of it this place is making me stir-crazy."

"Let me know if you want to stage a breakout. I'm sure I could rustle up a few hundred thousand volunteers who'd appreciate a good fight."

"I'll keep that in mind."

By now the last of the ship's crew had filtered out of the mess hall, leaving it all but empty. So when the hatch hissed open, Shepard turned in his seat to size up the new arrival. He saw Tali, who spotted them at once and made her way over.

"Shepard. Feeling better?"

"Much." Without turning away from her, he gave Wrex a conspicuous glance. "I don't suppose this little reunion is your doing?"

She raised her hands. "Don't look at me. As a rule, I try not to order krogan around."

Wrex snickered. "Smart girl. Believe it or not, Shepard, I wanted to see you for myself. If the rumors were to be believed, I'd only have the second-most impressive set of scars in the galaxy. Seems I didn't have to worry. You're still too pretty for Bakara's taste."

"Thanks. I think."

"Don't mention it. I guess the Prothean didn't do as much damage as I heard."

Shepard's brow knit. "Javik? What do you mean?"

The krogan tilted his head to one side, looking puzzled. "What, didn't she tell you?" he asked, with a jerk of his chin towards Tali.

"Tell me what?"

"Ah, we hadn't quite gotten around to that yet, Wrex."

"Oh. Guess I stepped in that one, then."

"Tell me _what_?" Shepard repeated, more insistently.

"The Prothean was the one that found you on Earth," Wrex explained, as Tali took a seat on the bench next to Shepard. She looked worried, but made no move to interrupt the story. "The way I heard it, he read your mind with a touch, and then tried to kill you."

"Javik… tried to kill me?"

"Don't worry, I shot him first."

Shepard gaped at Tali.

"In the arm. To stop him," she explained quickly. "He's still not very happy with me."

"I'll bet. But why was he trying to kill me?"

"He said you were too far gone. That it'd be a kindness not to let you wake up."

"Of course, he wasn't around the last time we tried to write you off," Wrex pointed out. "Stands to reason he'd play the skeptic."

"Still…" Shepard shuddered at the thought. As a soldier, he had accepted the possibility of death. That didn't mean he wanted to imagine a conversation between his friends about putting him out of his misery.

"You were in very bad shape when we found you," Tali admitted. "You'd been hit by the main gun of a Reaper capital ship while _on foot_. You're sitting here looking fine just eight days, almost to the hour, since then, but at that point we weren't sure you'd even live long enough for us to get you to a shuttle."

"You're tougher to kill than any human I've ever met," Wrex observed. "You sure you're not part-krogan?"

He clenched and unclenched a fist, watching the bones and muscles moving beneath his skin. "Who knows what Cerberus plugged into me three years ago?"

"Stop that," Tali snapped. "You're human, Shepard. Not because of how much of your body is original, and no matter how fast your implants let you heal, you're the same man who led us against Saren. You proved that against the Collectors. You proved it again against the Reapers. Don't beat yourself up because you've gotten a second chance. Or a third. It's less than what you've earned."

"The kid has a point. Hell, Mordin may have done the poking and prodding, but you're every bit as responsible for curing the genophage and saving my entire species. Not sure how many chips the galaxy lets you cash in for that," the krogan said, sounding honestly contemplative, "but I'm pretty sure you're still playing with house money, as you humans say."

If only the universe worked that way. There were a few people who had earned that surplus karma far more than he had. Especially for what Wrex was talking about. _I'm not sure I trust the krogan_, his own voice echoed in his mind._ But I trust you._ He had told himself he couldn't risk souring the tentative peace between the krogan and salarians, any more than he could risk the uneasy truce with the turians by revealing what had happened with Lieutenant Victus. Truth was death to diplomacy. And yet he was being celebrated for it, while others…

_ Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong._

He pushed away the memories. "Mercy killing doesn't sound like Javik. Not the Javik we came to know, anyway." He had been willing to put aside his people's past for this cycle's future. Hell, he'd even learned the value of a white lie. "I can't see him just killing me in cold blood, no matter what kind of shape I was in."

"Well…" Tali began hesitantly.

He frowned. "Well, what?"

"He claimed you were indoctrinated." She waved a hand dismissively. "But we all knew that was ridiculous."

Shepard just stared at her. He had no words for that. And the way she said it, so casually? It was like she had just mentioned he'd had a head cold. _Indoctrinated?_

Tali noticed his distress. "Don't worry about that."

"You're joking. You tell me I may have been indoctrinated, and then say '_don't worry about it_'?"

"I was afraid this would happen. You asked for no more secrets, but if you want me to stick to that you have to trust me when I tell you some things aren't as they seem. Or if you can't do that, at least give me a chance to explain."

"What is there to explain about something like that? What if Javik was right? I could be a threat, even now!"

"Shepard, that's absolutely ridiculous. By the time we'd found you, the Reapers were already dead!"

"Like varren in hunting season," Wrex agreed. "When word got around you were still alive, it'd already been a good six hours since the Crucible went off."

Despite their casual confidence, his head was still spinning. "Did Javik say why he thought what he did?"

"Not in so many words. Mostly I think he just got an… impression. When he described your visions of the Citadel, he said your mind reminded him of the minds of his teammates. The ones that betrayed him during the last cycle."

"It was a strong enough reminder to try and kill me, apparently. Strong enough that you had to stop him with a gun yourself," he pointed out.

"We've known since Saren that it's a gradual process, Tali reasoned. "And we spent enough time in and around Reaper technology over the last three years that we were bound to show some signs of it. If any of us were truly compromised, it sure didn't help them in the end."

"I'll say. If the Reapers _had_ messed up your head, Shepard, I'm pretty sure they crossed the wrong damn wires."

"I don't know. What if…" What if he could have done something more? What if there was something he had missed? What if there had been a way that wouldn't have left so many dead, or caused so much suffering?

What if some moment of weakness, some split-second of hesitation, had cost Liara and Garrus their lives?

"'What if' what?" Wrex scoffed. "You singlehandedly dragged half the galaxy together kicking and screaming, all to fight the Reapers. If you still think you could've done more, you might as well ask why you didn't turn yourself into a sixty-foot tall war mech that farts lightning." The krogan paused. "You can't do that, right? If you held that one out on us, I might be a little annoyed."

"I wish it were that easy," Shepard said, shaking his head.

"And I wish you'd stop punishing yourself," Tali countered angrily. "You're alive, but you're looking for ways to think you've been cursed. We all lost people we loved, but you need to stop wishing you were one of them."

"At the risk of repeating myself," Wrex said cautiously, "the kid has a point."

"I'm not going to stand around watching you wish you'd been a martyr, Shepard." Tali rose from the bench and stormed towards the exit. She stopped in front of the door when it opened, and looked at him over her shoulder. "And to think I came down here with _good_ news. Anderson's cleared you to return to the _Normandy_." Her head turned away, and her hands turned to fists at her sides. "But I don't want to see you aboard until you want to be there."

The quarian marched out, and Shepard would have sworn that the airlock closed with an empathetic slam behind her.

Wrex cleared his throat. "I hate to say it, but…"

Shepard didn't let him finish. He sighed. "She has a point."

* * *

"Major Alenko, team eighteen just reported in," the communications officer called out. "We have another one."

The commotion inside Harvest Command had intensified throughout the day. Admiral Hackett had been curious enough about their report on the husk piles to dedicate additional resources to help dredge up some answers. Unfortunately, with evening settling in, all they had were more questions. "And that makes seven." Kaidan sighed ruefully. "Must be our lucky day."

"Plus three possibles from earlier stops," Jacob pointed out.

"You're a beacon of optimism, Taylor."

"I do try." Jacob took the report feed from the duty officer and added it to the central display. "Sir, all these locations are within two klicks of each other, and all are centered on Kensington Gardens."

"Right on our doorstep," Kaidan breathed. That worried him. He leaned heavily on the edge of the main table, staring at the holographic representation of the old London park centered just a few kilometers west of where they stood. "Is there any Reaper wreckage inside that area?"

"There's a dreadnought wedged up against a skyscraper on the north side, but nothing on the interior that we know of. Our scans are still spotty, though. It's a big planet, and a big city when you get right down to it. Tree cover is thick enough to hide something small on the ground, especially since we're almost totally reliant on airborne eyeballs for recon."

"Any foot patrols?"

"A few. Nothing recent, though, and not enough to search an area that big."

The last thing Kaidan wanted to do was divert resources to a wild goose chase, but he was running out of leads. Hell, even that implied they'd had any leads in the first place. "Is there anything else to tie these locations together?"

"Other than proximity, no. There's no pattern that I can see. Except…"

Alenko looked up from the display. "Don't hold out on me now, Taylor. If you've got an idea, I want to know."

"It's thin, sir. Probably coincidence."

"If your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate heard something, I'd take it at this point."

Taylor frowned. "We've been catching a signal. Intermittent, very weak, and very brief."

"What kind of signal?"

"Burst transmission. It's so short-range we haven't even been able to triangulate it yet, but we know it's coming from somewhere within ten klicks of the Blue Zone. Good chance it's to the west, which puts Kensington Gardens in play, but I can't be sure of that yet."

"If it's that weak, how have you even gotten that much?"

"I pushed out a snooping subroutine to all our shuttles' comm systems. They've been listening for the signal passively since yesterday morning when I first caught it. I've narrowed it down from there." Alenko raised a questioning eyebrow, and Taylor shuffled nervously. "Sorry, sir. I know it's not procedure, but I figured I was just jumping at shadows and didn't want to worry anyone."

"Hell, Jacob, you've given us a head start on the break we needed. If Dr. Cole didn't know several dozen ways to kill me painfully, I'd kiss you."

"I appreciate the sentiment, sir."

"I have to ask, though: what tipped you off on this signal?"

"Work with Cerberus even a little while, and you learn not to let anything slip by. The Illusive Man's first lesson was 'there is no such thing as useless data.' Well, that's the first lesson after 'humans are superior,' but I didn't like that one much."

"Fair enough. What do you need to narrow down the location?"

"One or two more hits and I can get it down to a manageable area. And for that, all I need is time."

"All right. We'll maintain normal operations, except for team one. We're now on standby, as are Lieutenant Cortez and his shuttle. We'll deploy as soon as you have something."

.

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* * *

***A/N* -** Many thanks to my reviewers: CP1064, Sati James, and Theodur.

Questions, comments, and criticism are always welcome, and I'm more than happy to respond. Even quick one-liners to let me know what you did or didn't like are appreciated, since it helps me know what I'm doing right or wrong.


	6. Chapter Five: Revenant

**Chapter Five**

**REVENANT**

Twelve hours didn't seem like such a long time to wait, unless you were the one doing the waiting. In the end, that was how long it took to give Alenko and his team a place to start.

"The source is somewhere in the northwest corner of the park," Taylor explained hurriedly, marching beside Kaidan as the major led his team to the waiting shuttle. "I can get you within 500 meters."

"That close?"

"We didn't catch a whiff the whole night, but ten minutes ago we suddenly had at least three transmissions back-to-back."

Kaidan stopped, one foot in the shuttle, and turned to look at the ex-Marine. "That seems convenient."

"Yeah. And these transmissions were long enough to get partial intercepts. They're encrypted, but I've got the techs working on them."

Alenko let out a long breath as the shuttle's engines began spooling up. He leaned aside as Javik and Dr. Valus vaulted past him. "A trap?"

"Maybe. But set by who?"

Kaidan smirked. "The best way to find out is to spring it."

Taylor shook his head, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. "For a second there, you sounded like Shepard."

Alenko tried not to let his smile sour too much as he climbed the rest of the way into the Kodiak. "Stay in contact. If we're throwing a stick at a hornet's nest, I don't plan on getting stung."

The door closed behind him, and the craft was airborne before he reached the cockpit. The flight to their destination wouldn't take long, and Cortez didn't bother reaching cruising altitude.

They sped north, just a few hundred feet off the ground, weaving through jagged remnants of the skyscrapers that had not long ago formed the London skyline. Seeing it from this vantage point made the devastation seem almost absolute. The Reapers hadn't left a single building over fifty stories untouched on their first landings, and though they had ceased wanton destruction once the shock and awe of their arrival had been accomplished, the damage was extensive. It looked worse than it was, in some ways. The dust and soot that stained the city with a uniform layer of grey made everything feel the same, but many buildings would still be habitable once they could restore utilities. The fires that had raged unchecked for weeks had probably done more lasting damage, both in terms of actual destruction and ecological effects. Earth would bear scars for centuries to come, but she would heal, one piece at a time.

Those pieces were not quite falling into place yet. The rubble from collapsed structures still choked the streets, and progress in clearing them was slow. That was due less to lack of effort than it was the sheer scale of the task confronting them. Humans had spent almost ten thousand years building some of their cities, and the Reapers had given them a brutal reminder of just how much easier it was to destroy than to create.

As they banked to the left, Alenko began seeing flashes of green between the buildings outside the window. As Earth's urban centers had burst outwards to accommodate humanity's booming population, most of the megalopolises had tried to preserve at least some natural settings within their sprawl. Not all of them were on quite the scale of New York's Central Park, but just enough environmental conscience had tugged at Earth's eleven billion residents to ensure that children, even those in the most stifling super-cities, still knew what the color green looked like. In London, nature had been preserved in the form of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Anderson had told him that it had been mostly open-air once, but over time a thick mass of trees had been planted around the park's paths and sidewalks to shield visitors from the downtown London high-rises that loomed on all sides.

Standing among those skyscrapers, dark and formidable, was a Reaper dreadnought. Alenko fought back the momentary surge of adrenaline, remembering that this was the wreck Taylor had mentioned near the park. The ship was leaning precariously against one of the towers bordering the treeline. Its crablike legs were crumpled underneath and bent at odd angles, but the triangular crest of its main body was nearly upright. Pressed against the broken remnants of the skyscraper, it looked out over the sea of green and the ruined buildings beyond.

"I'll drop you at the northwest corner and let you go in on foot, Major," Cortez explained. "The only opening on the interior big enough to land through is around a lake in the center, so I'll wait for you here." The shuttle slowed as it drifted towards the ground. It settled to the street with a soft thud, and the hatch opened to allow Kaidan, Javik, and Valus out.

Kaidan donned and sealed his helmet. It was hardly necessary in his home atmosphere, but the HUD and readouts were useful, as well as providing a filter that made it easier to both speak and hear over the comm. "If we're not back in five minutes," he radioed Cortez, "just wait longer."

"Aye aye, sir."

Unslinging his assault rifle, Alenko led his team across the street and onto one of the concrete pathways that ran under the canopy of trees. The leaves were thick enough to further mute what sunlight reached them through the smog and smoky haze, giving the park the look of eerie twilight. Though the trees had kept off the worst of the soot that coated the rest of the city, the grass underfoot had seen better days thanks to the reduced sunlight. The trees also obstructed visibility, but they were at least planted in ordered rows, providing lines of sight. It gave them only about fifty meters of visibility in the dim light, but it was a reminder that this was no forest.

Nor were they here as sightseers. "Stay sharp," the major instructed. They kept near the edges of the sidewalk, in convenient range of cover behind benches or tree trunks. The path branched off frequently, with jogging courses that wound through the park and signs directing visitors to points of interest. There were museums and patios and art galleries aplenty, as well as the flower gardens and topiaries that had given the place its name.

They came to an intersection in view of a small pond off to their left. Alenko brought them to a halt and glanced at a map projected by his omnitool. They had followed a primary path south-southeast, roughly parallel to the border of the park not far to their right. "Looks like we're clear to the west."

"What is our course from here?" asked Javik.

"Stick to the paths, they lead all through the search area Taylor gave us. We'll move around the edge, then circle our way in."

"Very well," Valus acknowledged. "Scanners active."

"Let's move." With a flick of his wrist, Alenko led them further south until they had passed the pond. There they turned left, along what was roughly the southern limit of the search area Jacob had defined.

"There are significant numbers of life forms present, but they are mostly avians and small rodents. Biodiversity is startlingly limited, Major. Are all temperate zones on your planet like this?"

"This is a park, doctor, not a nature preserve."

"Why preserve only such limited parts of the ecosystem?"

"We're inside a city. This place is designed by and for people."

"Are you suggesting humans have modified their own biosphere for aesthetic purposes?"

The path they were following took a jog to the left. Kaidan was too busy scanning the area around him to roll his eyes, though he sorely wanted to. "Here, yes. Not everywhere. Sur'Kesh has cities, too, doesn't it?"

"Of course," the salarian scoffed. "We do not restrict the environment so harshly, however. Cities are cities, and nature is nature. We learned long ago that mixing the two can lead to unpredictable consequences."

"A dominant species must consume what it needs to survive. Nature exists to provide, nothing more."

"Flawed reasoning," Valus replied. "Unchecked pollution and population growth destroy ecosystems, and species die with them. Look at the drell."

"If a species destroys their own environment and they cannot withstand what they bring upon themselves, then they simply prove they were unworthy to survive," Javik reasoned.

"Quiet," Alenko ordered, before the argument could go any further. They were coming up on a crossroads, where half-a-dozen paths met at sharp angles. He pointed down the northern route. "This way. We'll—" He broke off when Javik raised a fist for silence, immediately dropping into a crouch and scanning between the trees over the scope of his weapon.

"Did you hear…?" Valus whispered, pistol at the ready.

The sound came again, a fast tapping noise, faint but unmistakable. "Gunfire. This way!"

Staying crouched, rifle locked against his shoulder, Alenko led them down the branch of the walkway that led northwest. They continued to hear short bursts of weapons fire, and then they saw the source.

The three of them moved to the side of the path, each hiding behind the nearest tree. The road split into a four-way intersection ahead. Moving along the left branch, visible through the rows of trees, were five armored figures. Alenko leaned around his cover, and watched as they took turns firing brief volleys from their assault rifles into the leaves above their heads.

Alenko darted out, sprinting to the next tree in the row. The figures were advancing carelessly, strolling along the path and stopping only to discharge their weapons into the upper branches of the trees as they passed. All five backs were turned nearly towards Kaidan and his team as they continued moving to the west.

Only a whisper of noise gave the movement away as Javik slipped in beside him. "They are all five human," the Prothean observed. "Though none are Alliance troops." His species' origins gave him better vision in the dim light, and Alenko saw nothing through the imaging systems of his helmet that contradicted the observation.

"What are they doing?" Kaidan muttered.

"Flushing their prey," Javik replied. "There, ahead of them. I believe there is someone up in the trees."

"Can you make them out?"

"Not from this distance," the Prothean replied, ducking out from cover and sprinting forward. He advanced rapidly, barely pausing behind each trunk, timing his sprints with each burst of gunfire from the men ahead. Kaidan followed his lead, while Valus brought up the rear, only just keeping up. The salarian was hardly helpless, but had by far the least field experience and devoted himself to watching their flanks and rear.

They were less than twenty meters behind their quarry when Javik finally stopped. The fleshy lids over both pairs of his eyes narrowed. "Yes. There is someone up in the branches."

Kaidan scowled. They were close enough to make out details on the men's armor. It was a mottled off-white, with highlights of black… and orange. "That looks like Cerberus armor!"

"Major, we must act quickly. The prey is—" Javik never even had a chance to finish his sentence. With a hail of falling leaves, a figure dropped from the branches in front of the five soldiers. It appeared to be a young boy, and he sprinted off the path as soon as he landed. A shout and several bursts of gunfire erupted as the soldiers gave chase.

Muttering a curse, Alenko charged from cover. He felt his implants flare as he focused, throwing a biotic blast that doubled over the lead Cerberus trooper. The four behind him stopped, looking around in confusion at the unexpected attack. Kaidan threw himself behind the nearest tree, slamming into the trunk with enough force to knock his breath away. He sent off a wild burst of rifle fire to draw their attention.

It worked. The Cerberus grunts traced the fire back to its source, and dove for cover themselves.

Three of them did, anyway. The first was just beginning to recover from Kaidan's biotic attack when the major's second volley ripped through his kinetic barriers and dropped him to the earth. Meanwhile, a second was limned in a green haze as Javik's own biotic energy lifted the trooper several feet into the air before throwing him back to the ground with bone-breaking force.

Alenko spun behind the wide trunk of his tree just as several rounds dug into it with a series of sharp snaps. He ducked around the opposite side long enough to aim a short burst of return fire, but it did nothing but riddle the trunk of another old oak with holes.

His comm chose that moment to crackle to life. "_Major Alenko, this is Taylor._"

"Bit busy right now!" he called back.

"_We're getting more transmissions from your vicinity. What's—_"

"Cerberus troops. Not surprised there's a few of these cockroaches still around, but right now we're trading shots with them!"

"_Cerberus? How the hell did they get here?_"

Alenko glanced out, but jerked his head back as a long burst of fire tore into his cover. Javik returned the favor, but succeeded only in driving all three Cerberus troopers back behind shelter.

Their foes suddenly split up, two of the three sprinting in opposite directions to try and divide their attention. Kaidan tracked one through his scope, but a volley from his assault rifle managed only a few glancing blows, not enough to punch through the enemy's shields.

"_Major, this is Cortez. I can be in the air and to your location in thirty seconds._"

"Negative, the trees are too thick for you to do any good here. Stand by."

Kaidan flinched as a round dug into his tree, close enough to pepper his barriers with wooden shrapnel. He tried sidling further behind the trunk, but another hail of gunfire impacted the side he tried to move towards. _Shit. They're not dividing our attention, they're getting firing angles!_ As the Cerberus men spread further apart, less and less of the tree Kaidan was hidden behind actually covered him. Off to his left and further back, Javik was in better shape, with their foes strung out in front of him at an angle.

With a roar, the Prothean jumped out from hiding. A flash of green energy surged forth, impacting the tree the centermost Cerberus soldier was hidden behind. Kaidan, fearing that his squadmate had exposed himself to fire with a failed attack, stopped and gawked as the entire tree began to lean towards Javik with a terrible groan. The thick trunk began buckling in on itself, and roots ripped upwards in a hail of grass and dirt. The soldier hiding behind it was flung aside, and Kaidan wasted no time filling him with holes.

Javik returned to cover, his barriers absorbing a few rounds the two remaining Cerberus troops sent his way. The rows of trees were screening him from fire, but that meant he also had very ineffective angles on their opponents. And when the Cerberus men realized they no longer had a shot on the Prothean, their attention returned to the major, who found himself still bracketed.

He grimaced as he assessed his dwindling options. If he waited any longer, one of the two was going to have a clear shot at him. Seeing no other choice, he picked a side, securing himself against one foe while exposing himself to fire from the other. He trained his rifle on his opponent's location.

Pulling the trigger at the first glint of white armor, chips of bark exploded from the back and sides of the tree. But just as the trooper leaned out for a shot of his own, Kaidan's weapon squealed in protest. Alenko only had time to spit a curse at his own foolishness, reaching in vain for a fresh heat sink.

A pistol round snapped the Cerberus soldier's head back just as he brought his rifle to bear, and he crumpled to the ground. Alenko blinked, then gave Dr. Valus a grateful nod. The salarian returned the gesture, a wisp of smoke drifting upwards as he ejected his pistol's heat sink.

The fifth and final assault trooper, outnumbered and surrounded, sprinted out in a suicidal charge. A simultaneous burst from Kaidan and Javik dropped the man before he could even fire his weapon.

Kaidan counted to five, getting his breathing back under control as he scanned for any enemies they had missed. There were none, and the five on the ground were all unmoving. "Taylor, this is Alenko."

"_Taylor here_. _You all right, sir?_"

"Five hostiles down, no friendly casualties. Are you reading any more transmissions in our vicinity?"

"_Negative. Looks like you're clear._"

"I want every available team here on the double."

"_Vega and team two are already inbound. I'll get the rest saddled up. Where do you want them?_"

"Surround the gardens and park as best you can. Encirclement protocols, and we'll tighten the noose from there. These guys were transmitting to someone, and we need to find them fast."

"_Aye aye, sir._"

The channel clicked closed, and Kaidan turned to Javik. "We need to track down that kid. Cerberus wanted him dead, and only he can tell us why. Did you see where he went?"

"The prey fled northwest, into the trees."

"He's a human boy, Javik, not prey."

The Prothean titled his crested head, regarding the major with confusion. "We are hunting him, are we not?"

With a sigh, Kaidan started jogging, and the other two fell in behind him.

* * *

The doors of the elevator opened, and Commander Shepard looked out into a hangar bay that was quiet, mostly empty, and nearly deserted.

Nearly. "Shepard."

"Wrex. I didn't expect to find you here."

"No place else to go. Been waiting on a shuttle out most of the morning." The krogan glanced at the solitary Kodiak berthed off to the side. "Seems someone already reserved that one for a ride off this boat."

"Sounds like someone's being selfish. You should give 'em a piece of your mind."

"Nah. Figured I'd just ask them for a ride."

"Ask? You must be getting soft."

"Maybe you're rubbing off on me. Before you know it I'll be negotiating treaties, or saying 'please' and 'thank you.'"

"I dunno, your negotiating style seems to have worked for you so far."

The battlemaster chuckled. "Only when I've got you around to play good cop. I doubt the salarians would take it too kindly if I went around headbutting their ambassadors."

"Maybe, but I could sell tickets. We'd raise a fortune."

"I'll settle for a free ride. And maybe a turn in your galley."

Shepard motioned for Wrex to lead on, and they began walking towards the waiting shuttle. "I'll see what we can do. Just remember, I've been back on solid food for barely a day."

"I'll go easy on you. Since you're so," he chuckled again, with the kind of sinister playfulness he did so well, "fragile."

"I'd appreciate it. After a good night's sleep I feel almost normal."

"I look forward to seeing you in action again."

"What about the rest of the krogan? I've heard they're pretty restless, and that'll only get worse without you around."

"The clan leaders were the ones begging me to find out how you were recovering. Besides, the best way to keep them happy in the long run would be to find something for them to do. There's gotta be someone in this solar system whose ass needs kicking, and hanging around you is the best way to find 'em."

"We'll see what comes up. Are you planning to stay long?"

Wrex looked sidelong at him. "Are you?"

He returned the krogan's considering gaze. "It's my home."

"Not what I asked."

The commander took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. "I've got a lot to do. That's where I'm going to get it done."

"Heh." Wrex grinned, and slapped Shepard on the back hard enough to stagger him. "That's more like it."

They climbed aboard the shuttle, and moments later John Shepard had returned to space. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the view.

To Shepard, the scale of space had always been the most enticing lure. The vastness, the scope, and the endless possibilities that existed within the borders of infinity. He'd enlisted in the military to go out and see the places he'd looked upon from a distance as a child, but he had never abandoned the wonder.

Some of his earliest memories involved endless hours on Arcturus Station, doing nothing but staring out the biggest viewport in the darkest room he could find. He would count the stars, admiring the variables of brightness and color. As he grew older, he learned such extraordinary things: some weren't just single stars, but binaries. Some weren't even stars at all, but whole clusters, or galaxies so far away his mind could not even grasp the numbers that tried to define the spaces in between. Seeing them always reminded him of so much. Where he had been. Where he had yet to go. Who he had met along the way.

Right now he had eyes for just one star, glimmering in the distance. He felt a smile spread over his face as it grew through the viewport, as the glimmer became a shape, and the edges of that shape resolved into clarity. Like so many other points of light, it was not a star at all, and the shuttle slowed on its approach to the SSV _Normandy_. In many ways, far too many ways, he had doubted this moment would ever come. It had taken some self-motivation to step on the shuttle, with part of him expecting that they'd fly to an empty spot among the stars and he'd watch the universe spontaneously burn down around him. But now he saw the proof with his own two eyes, shining silver in the sunlight, that his nightmares were not his life.

The shuttle pilot took them through the mouth of the hangar bay, setting them down with practiced ease. Shepard and Wrex disembarked to blessedly absent fanfare. A pair of technicians were tinkering with the weapons locker, and paid them little mind. James' corner of the bay was vacant, spare pieces of gear still littering the workbench alongside mismatched freeweights. No one stood at the pilot's ready station, but as they walked by Shepard could see an active terminal with a list of flight logs, and next to it a single framed picture of two men, together and smiling.

Like stars whose light traveled the cosmos for billions of years after they were exhausted and dim, people were still here, even when they weren't. The first sun to ignite from the first nebula in the universe was still out there somewhere, a billion-degree ember that would shine for eons to come. Stars, after all, never truly died.

The elevator took them up. Wrex left on the engineering deck, muttering something about haggis. Shepard smiled and pressed the control panel, and the elevator took him to the ship's top level. He entered his quarters, dropped off his things – a single duffel that held the clothes someone had brought to his room in the _Marseilles_' sickbay – and then stopped. He looked around for a moment, considering. With a nod, he gathered a few items from a drawer at his desk. He placed them in his pockets and returned to the elevator.

The doors re-opened, one level later, on the command deck.

"Shepard," Tali said, jerking backwards in surprise. "You're back."

"As instructed, Admiral."

She shuffled nervously. "Look, Shepard, I—"

"Was right?" He could only see the shadow of her mouth, but he knew from the angle of her head that she was speechless. "If you were planning on saying anything besides 'I told you so,' don't."

He let her process that. At last she drew herself up and snapped off a salute. The light of her eyes crinkled in a smile. "Welcome back… Captain."

"It's good to be back, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy."

"What, no 'admiral' anymore? That was fast."

"Spectre's privilege."

"Quarians aren't technically a Council race, you know."

"Yeah. We're going to have to do something about that, aren't we?"

She blinked. Once, then twice. "Well, uh…"

"How else is my authority going to do you any good for your land claim on Rannoch?" He gave her a smirk. "We're holding up the elevator here. Follow me."

He didn't look back, but he heard her footsteps as she hurried to catch up. The first stop was the bridge. Many of the crew gawked as he passed, and he tried not to let the smile he was feeling show.

The pilot's chair was turning even before he'd made it past the final bulkhead. "Commander. Glad to see you still know your way around the place."

"You know, one of these days I'm going to have to cut off your access to the security cameras."

The pilot adopted an expression of pained surprise. "Com-_mander!_ You _know_ I would _never_ abuse the _Normandy'_s systems like that!"

"All right. But if it's not you, then I'll have to cut off EDI's access. If that's even possible."

"I would not recommend that course of action. Since my consciousness was integrated with the ship, many core subroutines have become reliant on my surplus processing power. Severing my control from any hardware integrated into the primary systems could have unintended consequences."

"See, Joker, _that's_ an excuse. You could learn a thing or two."

"Jeff has been a quick study on many subjects under my tutelage," EDI offered helpfully.

"Too much information…" Tali muttered.

"Ahem. Well. It's good to have you back, Commander. Let me know when you need me to fly us through an asteroid field or slingshot around a sun or something."

"Jeff, I would not recommend providing the commander with inspiration," EDI warned.

"Crap. Too late."

"And here I thought you enjoyed a challenge. Don't worry, Joker. I think station keeping is good enough for the moment."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, one other thing."

"Sir?"

"Open your hand." Shepard held out his own, fist closed. "I've got a present for you."

The pilot looked at him doubtfully. "Ooh, let me guess. Is it a pygmy varren? I've always wanted a pygmy varren."

"Joker."

"Oh, all right." He rolled his eyes, but held out his hand. Into it dropped a tiny OSD. "What's this?"

Shepard smirked. "Something I picked up on Hagalaz. Just a few video clips you might like." He began walking back towards the elevator, but one glance showed the pilot already moving to connect the disk and examine its contents. Just before he reached the elevator, he heard Joker's voice, and not over the intercom. Some of the bridge crew jumped in surprise at the joyous shout of "Commander, _you are awesome!_"

Another level down, he and Tali arrived on the crew deck. Hanging a left out of the elevator, Shepard headed straight for the medical bay. The lone occupant's office chair swiveled around at the sound of the airlock opening, and Dr. Karin Chakwas' face burst into a radiant smile.

"Shepard!"

"Doctor. It's good to see you."

"Likewise. You're looking rather well."

"So are you." For some reason, the first word to come to mind whenever he thought of the grey-haired physician was "dame." Sage, stately, and always commanding of respect, even as you couldn't help but feel at ease around her.

"Flatterer," she scoffed, with faux-disdain. "Your words are nothing to me."

"Don't I know it. That's what this is for." From the pocket of his hooded jacket he removed a small, clear bottle, and held it by the neck as he offered it to her.

She raised an eyebrow. "As I recall, it was my turn to buy."

"So it is. Consider this an advance on next year." She was still smiling as he left the infirmary.

He made a one-eighty outside the door. As he passed between the rows of sleeping pods, he could feel Tali stiffen beside him. He stopped. "You don't have to come in," he said gently.

She shook her head. "No. It's okay. Unless… unless you want to say goodbye on your own. I'll understand."

He merely laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled. Not the beaming, gregarious smiles he had shared with the others. Just a little something to let her know it was okay. The door opened, and they went in.

Shepard stood in front of the console for a long moment. The door slid shut behind them, cutting off the light from the hallway, leaving the main battery bathed in its own faint red light. He stepped forward, resting a hand on the console that had seen so many hours of meticulous attention. With his other hand, he reached into another pocket, and withdrew an object wrapped in cloth. Holding it gingerly, he pulled at the folds of fabric, until he revealed the second bottle he had kept in his quarters. This, however, was not Serrice Ice Brandy. It was the broken remains of a cylinder of pink glass set within a silver frame. Avoiding the sharp edges, he turned it over in his hand, examining the tiny hole dead-center on the handle. It was the perfect circle of a single Mantis rifle round. He set it down on the edge of the console.

"I'll meet you at the bar, my friend. Some day. First round's on me."

He left the room, walking more slowly than he had been before. He retraced his steps past the sleeping pods, his gait slowing further. When he came to the next turn, he stopped.

"Shepard…" Tali said hesitantly.

He took a steadying breath. "Tali… This one, I think… I'd like to be alone."

"I understand, Shepard. But…"

There was something about the uncertainty in her voice that gave him pause. "What is it?"

"The room has been locked down since… I mean, no one has been able to get in. It won't open. Not that we wanted to, but… even EDI couldn't get it open."

His brow furrowed. "She probably didn't want anyone getting access to the Broker terminals. It's possible…" he trailed off, remembering her apartment on Illium, and the picture frame coded to his touch. "I may be able to get in."

Tali seemed to follow his thinking. She had been there with him, of course. She and Garrus and Liara… they had always been there with him. "If anyone can, it's you." She studied him for a moment. "I'll be down in engineering," she added simply. Nothing else needed to be said, and she made for the elevator.

"Tali." She stopped and turned. He reached into his pocket, and flipped something towards her. She caught it with both hands, and studied the small object in her palms. She looked up at him questioningly.

"Another little piece of home," he explained.

She held up the small stone between two fingers. "I seem to recall you giving me something like this before. You did leave some of Rannoch behind, right?" she asked ruefully.

He shook his head. "I didn't keep that one for you to remember your homeworld. I kept it for myself, to remember you."

"I…" she seemed stunned. "Thank you, Shepard. But why…?"

"You gave me back my home, Tali. I don't need mementos anymore."

"We all helped get Earth back, Shepard. You can hardly give me credit for that."

He shook his head. "I wasn't talking about Earth."

Her fist closed around the stone. She nodded, and walked away.

He watched her go, then turned back to the final hurdle. This stop would be the most difficult. He stepped forward slowly, and stared at the red indicator over the door. With a last, deep breath, he reached out for the control panel. Without fanfare, it went from red to green. The door parted with a hydraulic hiss, and Shepard stepped inside.

He looked around the cabin. The monitors on the wall of data feeds were dark. The research terminal was active but idle. The small bank of screens in the corner was blank, and the chair in front of them empty. For an instant, he could almost see her there, turning to look as he walked in. The way she would smile, just a little, as she saw him...

With a faint electronic warble, a glowing sphere descended into view. "Commander Shepard. It's a pleasure to see you again."

"Hello, Glyph."

"It has been more than a week since anyone came to these quarters. I was beginning to worry their functions had been abandoned."

He felt a brief stab of anger at the comment, before he realized that the VI had no way of knowing what had happened to Liara. "A lot has happened," he said. "I'm afraid Liara won't be coming back." Saying even that much, just in talking to a hologram, made it feel more real somehow.

"That's unfortunate. However, Dr. T'Soni did enact protocols for these circumstances."

"What kind of protocols?"

"You have always retained full access to these quarters. However, in the event of her incapacitation or loss of signal from her life signs transponder, administrative control of all Shadow Broker assets reverts to you."

He smiled sadly. "She always did think of everything."

"Her contingency plans are quite thorough," the VI agreed. "Though I have had little to do myself apart from monitoring transponders. Your vital signs have displayed an alarming series of fluctuations over the past week."

"It's been that kind of week. I didn't realize Liara had hooked you up to the _Normandy_'s readouts." Life signs detection was a standard function for most ships, to help identify casualties or locate survivors during combat. It often extended to shore parties through links in combat armor.

"She didn't, Commander. The _Normandy_'s tracking protocols were considered insufficient. I'm responsible for monitoring the quantum-entangled transponders that were implanted in Dr. T'Soni and yourself."

He didn't recall ever having one of those installed. Of course, some advanced subdermal implants could be delivered with little more than a touch, and cost would have been no obstacle. All in all, it rather felt like something Liara would do since she had taken on the mantle of the Shadow Broker. "I wonder when she was planning on telling me."

"I wasn't made aware of that information. I'm sorry, Commander."

He shook his head. "Nevermind."

"Very well. All active assets are available to you. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask."

He nodded, and the VI drifted off. There would be time for that later, and right now he had other things on his mind… like how to say goodbye to the woman he loved.

The room around him went red.

Klaxons blared, and with three quick steps Shepard darted back outside. The crew members that had been idling at the mess table were already scrambling for their posts as the _Normandy_ went to battle stations.

"_Commander, you'd better get up here!_" Joker's voice called urgently over the intercom.

"What's going on?"

"_You wouldn't believe me if I told you_," Joker replied, his voice flat and deadly serious. "_Sir, you need to hurry._"

.

.

.

.

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* * *

***A/N* -** Thanks to my reviewers: Aotrs Commander, Mattmaster112, Hanyou-demoness, and Theodur


	7. Chapter Six: Doppleganger

**Chapter Six**

**DOPPLEGANGER**

Fortunately for Alenko and his team, it didn't take them long to find the child.

Javik tracked him to another tree, barely a hundred meters from where their firefight with Cerberus had taken place. The three of them surrounded the trunk, peering up into the thick cover of leaves.

Kaidan slung his rifle over his shoulder. It was probably best to look as non-threatening as possible. "You don't have to hide," he called out. "We're friends. I'm Major Alenko of the Alliance."

There was rustling among the branches, and then a face, barely distinguishable in the dim light, peeked out. It glanced towards where the firefight had taken place, then back. "You don't look like them," said the voice of a young boy.

"Perceptive of him," Valus muttered.

Alenko gave the salarian a quelling look. "What's your name?"

"John," the boy replied.

"I have a friend named John," said Kaidan. "How old are you?"

"Eleven."

"You must be a good climber, John. Do you want to come down and talk?"

"Is it safe? Are they gone?"

"Don't worry. They can't hurt you now."

"I didn't do anything wrong," the boy said. "Well, I know I wasn't supposed to leave the shelter, but I don't think those guys were chasing me because of that."

"Do you know why they were chasing you?"

"Because I saw the grey men, I think."

"Grey men?" Alenko asked, with a sinking suspicion he already knew quite well what the boy meant.

"The men with blue eyes. My uncle said it's what the bad guys turn us into."

"They're called husks," Valus offered unnecessarily.

"We hid from them for months. But then everyone thought they were dead."

"John, come on down from there," Alenko said, gently urging. "We don't need to talk about this here."

"Wait," said Javik. "Boy, what do you mean everyone _thought_ they were dead?"

"Everyone said the light killed them. They were wrong."

Before Alenko could think to stop him, the Prothean was glowing green. With a gesture the boy was lifted by a haze of biotic energy, torn from his branch with a shout of dismay. He flailed as he drifted slowly to the ground, wide-eyed. When the light faded, he fell to his backside with a thud. He sat stunned, blinking owlishly.

"Whoa."

"Don't be afraid," Kaidan soothed, shooting Javik a seething glance. Spooking the kid would do no one any good.

"That was weird," the boy said. "And kinda cool."

"Resilient mindset," Valus observed. "Flight, gunfire, biotic encounter, and the child remains quite calm."

Kaidan knelt to keep from looming over the boy. Despite the salarian's assessment, there was also a good chance the kid might be in shock. He didn't want to push too hard. "Can you tell me what you saw, John? Start from the beginning."

"I got bored at the shelter, so I snuck out. Everyone said it was safe now, and I wanted to visit the park. I was exploring, and that's when I saw the grey men."

Javik knelt beside Kaidan, giving the major a significant look. "Where did you see them?"

The boy pointed northeast. "That way, where the trees are real big. I always liked climbing there."

"Can you show us?" the Prothean asked.

The boy grew fearful, shaking his head vigorously. "I don't want to go back there."

Alenko held up his hands in a calming gesture. "It's okay, you don't have to. What else did you see?"

"I saw the grey men. Then the guys in armor saw me. They started chasing me, so I ran."

"When you said people were wrong about the light killing the grey men, what did you mean?"

The boy looked confused. "I meant that they were wrong. I saw the grey men moving."

"Impossible," Javik breathed. He gave Alenko another pointed look, and held up his hand. Kaidan considered a moment, then nodded.

To Kaidan's relief, the Prothean displayed uncharacteristic subtlety in his effort to read the boy's memories. He simply held out his hand, as if to help the child to his feet. "Come, young one. We must return you to your family." With only a little hesitation, the boy took the offered hand and stood.

"Doctor," Alenko said, turning to Valus. "Take the boy to our shuttle. Go back the way we came, it should still be clear. See if you can find this uncle of his at the shelter. Javik and I will head northeast to check the husk pile."

The salarian nodded, and managed a reassuring smile as he led the boy away. Once they were safely out of earshot, Kaidan turned to Javik.

The Prothean growled, a rumbling sound from deep in his throat. "The boy speaks truly. He saw husks moving. But that was not all he saw, though he didn't even know it himself."

"What?"

"There is a ship, hidden among the trees. I could not determine details, the boy's glimpse was far too brief, but I recognized the colors of Cerberus."

Kaidan began marching northeast. He keyed on his radio as he walked. "Taylor, this is Alenko."

"_Go ahead, Major._"

"We've got a possible Cerberus vessel hidden in the trees, northern quadrant of Kensington Gardens. I need all units to converge on sector fourteen."

"_Major, this is Vega_," a new voice called over the comm. "_We just landed at the north edge of the park, right next to that sector. We'll check it out_."

"Acknowledged. But be careful, they may have active husks."

There was a palpable silence over the channel. "_Say again_."

"There is a strong possibility that Cerberus has found some way to reactivate the husks. Good chance they're the ones who have been moving them around. I'd put money down that the piles we've been coming across have been Cerberus experiments."

"_Ain't those bastards ever gonna learn?_"

"_No,_" said Taylor. "_That's why we need to find them and shut this down hard._"

"Jacob, get on the horn to Hackett. If Cerberus has a ship, we're gonna need something more than shuttles to keep it on the ground."

"_Or put it back there if it lifts off. Roger, I'll see what we can whistle up. Pretty sure the _Einstein_ is still in close orbit._"

The channel was quiet, until a burst of noise in the distance was followed by an angry voice. "_Shit, Major. We just started taking fire! I can't see it yet, but something tells me we found your ship!_"

"Vega, what's your location?"

"_Grid two, sector fourteen_."

"We're on our way! All teams, this is Major Alenko, converge on that location!" They broke into a sprint, cutting straight through the trees as they made their way towards the sounds of battle. With any luck, they could flank whoever had engaged Vega and put them down quickly.

"_Major, I hope you're running. They've got us pinned, and Baker is down. I count at least ten hostiles._"

"We're coming in at your two o'clock. Hold on." The firefight grew louder, and soon Alenko was seeing the flashes of weapons fire. They were coming in to the left and a little behind the enemy, but surprise would only accomplish so much. There were at least a dozen white-armored Cerberus assault troopers. With a sharp gesture, he sent Javik further to the right, and found cover for himself.

With a brief check to see that Javik was ready as well, he took careful aim, and opened fire.

One trooper dropped instantly, his shields and body alike shredded by a dozen high-velocity projectiles. Javik downed another a split-second later, and Alenko wounded a third man in the arm before the Cerberus group realized their danger and responded with suppressing fire.

Huddling behind his tree, the major could only hear an endless series of snaps as slugs dug into the wood at his back. They were badly outnumbered and outgunned. "Taylor, how long until—"

Alenko never finished the sentence, as the entire forest seemed to explode.

Even shielded by the tree trunk, he felt the shockwave wash over him, and it nearly sent him tumbling out from behind his cover. Leaves and twigs and entire branches hurtled past, pushed by the force of displaced air. He could hear voices calling over the radio, but couldn't make them out. His helmet's sound system was still trying to adjust to the sudden roaring whine of thrusters powered by a mass effect drive.

When the torrent finally began to subside, he risked a glance. The entire central section of the woods had been smashed into kindling. Entire trees had been uprooted and thrown back like saplings, creating a clearing in the canopy that revealed the sky. The Cerberus troops, closer to the center of the blast, were nowhere to be found, but their immediate reprieve was small consolation. The ship was already pushing skyward.

A ship that looked rather familiar.

"_The hell?_" Vega's voice roared, drowning out the rest of the radio chatter on the channel. "_Is that the _Normandy_?_"

The shape was unmistakable. A white superstructure curved like a beak and downswept black wings gave every impression of a lethal bird-of-prey. Coming about, the blue glow from the four engine nacelles burst out, throwing a fresh roar and wave of air back into them.

"_Can't be. She's in orbit with the rest of the fleet._"

"That's not the _Normandy_," Alenko said firmly. He scowled as the ship surged away, speeding for orbit. "But don't forget who built the SR-2. This is how they pulled off some of their surprise attacks," the major realized. "Mars. Thessia. Hell, they even caught an STG base on Sur'Kesh off-guard."

"_And we never even suspected it_," Jacob grumbled."_Hell, for all we know they could have been with the fleet ever since we attacked Cronos Station. This is one toy we'd better not let Cerberus keep._"

"_Joker's gonna be pissed, too,_" Vega added wryly.

"Taylor, get me Hackett, right now. If we lose visual for too long we may never find that ship again."

"_Don't worry, sir. Cavalry's already on the way._"

* * *

"Joker!" Shepard's sprint ended at the back of his pilot's chair. Damn, but it felt good to be moving like a soldier again. "What have we got?"

"Fleet command has gone batshit. We've got fighters scrambling into Earth orbit to stop a Cerberus frigate making a break for it from the surface."

"Cerberus?"

"It confused me, too. Then we linked up with the visual feed from interceptors off the _Einstein_, and I got pissed instead. Those assholes built another _Normandy_."

"I guess we shouldn't be surprised. They threw a fleet at us from their base, and an army against the Citadel. Another SR frigate would be chump change."

"Yeah, well, it's gonna be scrap metal in a minute. EDI, you got a vector yet?"

"I am still trying to collate the visual sightings from the pursuing fighters. The course is erratic."

"Trying to get through the debris field in orbit to make an FTL jump," Joker guessed. "Or maybe the pilot just sucks."

"Or both."

"EDI, give me something. Pick a side of the planet, I just need a place to start."

"Daylight side." The _Normandy_'s engines roared to life before the second word was even finished. The inertial compensators were stressed enough by the sudden acceleration that Shepard had to grab the back of Joker's chair.

"Easy, killer. They're not getting away."

"If they lose the fighters tailing them before we get there, they are. Doesn't take even a competent pilot to ditch pursuit when you've got a stealth drive."

"This is strange," EDI said, her hands flying across the controls of the copilot's chair with unnatural swiftness. "Their course does not appear to be leading to an FTL escape vector."

"Where the hell are they going, then?"

"I cannot be certain, but they are not leaving the orbital debris field. An intercept course has been uploaded to your terminal."

"Hallelujah." The _Normandy_ surged forward yet again. Not for the first time, Shepard wondered if some of Joker's machinations weren't comprised of screwing with the settings of the inertial compensators to keep everyone else on their toes. Or maybe he was just that good at coaxing more out of the ship than anyone else could.

"Looks like they're heading dark side now," Shepard observed. "Putting the planet between themselves and the fleet."

"Forget the fleet. It's _me_ they better worry about."

They sped into Earth orbit at hypervelocity, with Joker pushing the ship hard into the debris field. The kinetic barriers had already warned of more than a few hits from objects too small to see, let alone avoid, and it would only get worse. The skies above Earth had been hazardous even before humans had uncovered the Prothean archives on Mars, and the new age of space travel had only worsened the clutter trapped in the planet's gravity well. The Reaper invasion had added hundreds of destroyed ships, stations, and satellites to the equation, and the Battle of Earth had added thousands more. At this point, leaving the surface of the planet without kinetic barriers was tantamount to suicide.

At their current velocity, entering the debris field was almost as bad.

"There they are!" Joker called. At the barest edge of their sight through the viewports, a brief glint could be seen.

"One of the pursuing interceptors has been destroyed," EDI reported.

"Weapons fire?"

"I am uncertain. It is possible that they are in range of the SR-3's GARDIAN systems, but until we enter visual range ourselves I cannot say."

"SR-3?" Shepard wondered.

"The logical designation."

"Anybody who calls that _thing_ 'Normandy' is gonna answer to me," Joker growled. With an emphatic gesture, the area above his console was replaced by the video feed from the _Normandy'_s forward gun mounts, essentially giving him a viewscreen in front of the pilot's chair. It showed a second flash, and they were close enough to recognize that this was another explosion.

"Another interceptor has been destroyed. Only one ship of the pursuing flight remains. Jeff, you must hurry."

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying."

"Are our stealth systems active?"

"Yes, sir. They won't see us coming, but—" Joker stopped, gritting his teeth as he threw the ship into a wild swerve. "They will be able to see it if I run into a hunk of metal at a thousand klicks a second. Not that there'll be anything left of us to care."

"How're the shields?"

"Minor impacts have reduced kinetic barriers to eighty-six percent," EDI reported.

"I hope they can't detect…" Shepard trailed off, eyes widening.

"Commander, I believe you have had an idea," said EDI. "Such emissions would not be contained by a stealth system's internal heat sinks. I will recalibrate the sensors to scan for high energy discharges from kinetic barrier impacts within the debris field."

"Hurry EDI," said Joker. We're still at least thirty seconds from a visual, and— shit." A brief flash popped in and out of existence on the screen. "There went the last interceptor."

"Scanning."

A glimpse of something on Joker's viewscreen caught Shepard's attention. It was the largest piece of debris in orbit that he'd seen, and it also looked familiar. "EDI, one-seven-zero mark six, what is that?"

He would have worried about distracting any other crew member who was working on delicate recalibrations of the _Normandy_'s sensors, but multitasking was hardly a challenge for EDI. Several thousand simultaneous incursions through a Collector firewall could attest to that. The AI required no more than a glance along the course Shepard indicated to form a response. "That is the Presidium."

Something in his chest grew tight. "I thought the Citadel was destroyed by the Crucible."

"The power surge caused several explosions, including those that severed the structural links between the Wards and the central ring. All electromagnetic activity ceased, disabling life support functions and the atmospheric envelope. The station's superstructure is still largely intact, however, and the six main fragments remain in unstable orbits."

"In other words, it wasn't made of explodium," said Joker. The pilot frowned. "Wait a second, you think they might be going there?"

"That is possible," EDI reasoned. "It is consistent with their estimated trajectory, and I see no other reason why they would not have simply escaped."

"I'll take that bet," Joker said, making a small adjustment to their course. "If we're right, we've got the angle on them. We might even beat them to it."

Pushing aside his doubts, Shepard switched on his comm unit. "Wrex, Tali, grab your gear and meet me in the hangar bay. We're going to the Citadel."

Two acknowledgements came back, and Shepard turned to his right. "EDI, keep tracking. If that's not where they went, or if they change course, I want to know."

"Affirmative, Shepard."

"Joker, send an update to Hackett and Anderson. Get the rest of the fleet here. Whatever Cerberus is up to, they don't make it out of this system alive. I'll be in the armory."

Joker glanced up at his commander. "Sir, are you ready to suit up again?"

Shepard's mouth formed a thin line as he looked at the dark ring drifting in the viewscreen. "If anybody wants to tell me no, they'll find out."

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

***A/N* -** Thanks to my reviewers: Sergeant Conley, Oann, and Thanatos34.


	8. Chapter Seven: What You Wish For

**Chapter Seven**

**BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR**

Donning his armor again felt like putting on his second skin. With every piece that locked in place, every weapon loaded for bear, Shepard felt his determination return. By the time he emerged from the elevator and stormed towards the waiting shuttle, he felt ready for anything.

"Joker, do you read me?"

"_Five by five, Commander. Presidium looks almost intact from out here, but I'm reading no EM and no atmosphere._"

"You heard the man," he said to Tali and Wrex, who were already waiting in the shuttle. "Helmets and mag boots it is."

"_Opening bay doors._"

The Kodiak lifted off and emerged from the hangar. With Cortez still on Earth, Tali was at the controls. "Take us to the Citadel Tower," Shepard ordered. "Until we know what they're here for, that's as good a place as any to start."

"_No sign of our evil twin yet,_" Joker reported. "_Either they've been here already or they changed course on us._"

"_Scans are inconclusive so far, but I do not believe they deviated from their previous path,_" said EDI.

"They're around here somewhere, I can feel it. Keep looking," Shepard instructed. "What's the ETA on the rest of the fleet?"

"_Commander, this is Hackett._"

"Admiral, you reading us?"

"_Mr. Moreau patched us in. Shepard, I've sent you everything I can spare, but it's not much. I have to keep most of the fleet in lunar orbit._"

"Why? What's going on?"

"_I just spoke with Major Alenko. Cerberus has found some way to reactivate Reaper technology. They've been experimenting on husks in London, and the major's investigation is what flushed them out._"

"We need to stop them quickly, then. This is a lot worse than just one rogue frigate."

"_Agreed. And if they can reactivate husks, there's the possibility they can do more. I can't risk leaving the derelicts over Luna unguarded._"

"Sir, if we can stop them here, it won't matter. But if they get away…"

"_Commander, there are hundreds of _Sovereign_-class Reapers sitting dark over the moon. If even one wakes up, it'll take half the firepower we have left to stop it. I have the _Einstein_ scrambling the rest of her fighters, and most of her cruiser escort is burning hard for your position. The turians, geth and quarians have all sent some ships as well, but it'll be a while before they arrive._"

"We'll make do, Admiral."

"_I know you will, Shepard. Good hunting._"

"We're almost in range, but I'm not seeing anyplace safe to land on the tower itself," said Tali. "I'll have to put us down at the base of the Presidium."

"Take us in."

The shuttle swooped over the darkened spire of the Citadel Tower. From here, there was nothing to see on the remains of the Citadel's central structure except the occasional scorch mark. Behind them, the sun was just beginning to rise over the edge of the planet, which would provide some light to work with. Tali set the Kodiak down at the base of the tower. Without gravity, she had to set the autopilot to deploy a mass effect field to keep the shuttle from floating off. With that accomplished, they opened the hatch and the three of them jumped out onto a sidewalk that was familiar in only the vaguest sense of the word.

It might have been easier to understand if it had been made unrecognizable by devastation, but that wasn't the case. There were jagged gaps where explosions had ripped out whole sections of some paths, and many of the few buildings in sight were missing walls or roofs. Blackened marks, either from the explosions or electrical overloads, were scattered haphazardly over the surfaces around them. It gave the place a dilapidated appearance, but it was far from the ruin they might have expected. By and large the Presidium was physically whole, which only made the differences more disconcerting.

"I barely even recognize this place," Shepard said, looking around, trying to find anything resembling a landmark from the old concourse.

"If the tower wasn't here I would hardly know it was the Citadel," Tali agreed.

Maybe it was the missing lake, or the lack of trees, or the absence of lights, or even just the dearth of people, but Shepard couldn't help but feel that it was more than that. Where they were intact, the sidewalks were bare and uniform, and not arranged at all the way he remembered. There were no ramps down to the lower levels, or any doors leading to where the elevator had been. The whole place was… blank. Sterile. Alien.

"If we want up, it looks like we're walking," grumbled Wrex.

"Wonderful," Tali muttered. "Now all we need is a Reaper squirming on the top of the tower for history to repeat itself."

"Be careful what you wish for," Shepard warned. He took the disorienting first step onto the side of the Citadel Tower. His boot clicked into place, and he began walking up.

"_Shepard, I am reading energy signatures inside the tower_," EDI reported.

"So much for beating them here. Do you have a location?"

"_The Council chambers, approximately. It is difficult to pinpoint._"

"Close enough to start. Let's hurry."

The Citadel had always been ever-changing in form, whether due to the keepers' machinations, the whims of its residents, or the constant attacks over the past few years. But now Shepard was seeing that even the exterior of the tower was not what he had remembered. The elevator shafts were gone. The service ramps, hatches, and exterior walkways were nowhere to be seen. There was not a window in sight. The surface was scored, even cracked in some places, like the entire tower had been blistered by intense heat. A close inspection could make out microfissures scattered along the length of the exterior, which gave the tower a texture and look much like a sapling tree. None of those tiny gouges was anything close to the entrance they needed, however.

"It's like the whole place was sealed off. When did this happen?"

"The keepers must have modified it after the Reapers retook the station," Tali guessed.

"Industrious little bastards."

"I wonder what the Wards look like. Hey, maybe we'll visit there next!" Wrex's voice was dripping with sarcasm and false cheer.

Shepard groaned. "If we end up making stops on every piece of the Citadel to reassemble some ancient device, I swear I'm retiring."

By now they were almost halfway up the side of the tower. The trek was much easier with a straight, flat surface, which was something to be thankful for.

"We're making much better time without hordes of geth and krogan to fight through," Tali observed.

"I can run ahead and shoot back at you some, for old times' sake."

"No thanks."

Wrex chuckled. "You know, you're a lot less fun to tease than I remember. Do all quarians get so cranky after adolescence?"

"Yes. We also become very violent when provoked," she retorted, deadpan.

"I knew it!" the krogan cackled. "C'mon, tell us another secret."

"I am holding a shotgun."

"Awww. That's not a secret."

"You're annoying," she grumbled.

"Neither is that."

"_Shepard, energy signatures are increasing in intensity. It appears that some sections of the Presidium have begun reactivating._"

"I've seen what an electrical overload can do to a ship, and this looks a lot like that. We may have enough of the place here to walk around on, but it sure doesn't seem like its ready to light up again."

"_With reliance on the keepers for maintenance a full overview of the Citadel's technical infrastructure has never been attempted, but some of the power readings are coming from known secondary conduits. Even so, the Presidium's systems must have remained far more intact than we believed possible._"

"Any idea what they're doing up there?"

"_There is insufficient data to discern the logic of this course of action_."

"EDI, I've already told you that it's okay to call us unpredictable. We're not going to think less of you for it."

"_I am sorry, Shepard. At this point, I cannot even offer theories on Cerberus' motives._"

"I guess we'll just have to find out the old-fashioned way."

They were near the top of the tower now, with no sign of resistance… or any way to get inside. The cracks were little more than hairline fractures in the structure, while none of the burn marks or impact craters went more than skin deep. It was easy to forget just how tough the material that formed the Citadel really was, but there was a good reason why closing the arms of the structure made it all but impregnable.

Anything organics had added buildings, doors, glass-enclosed office areas and elevator shafts was ridiculously fragile by comparison. Any of those things would have given them a practical entrance, but nothing was recognizable as an organic construct. The massive panoramic windows in the Council's meeting chamber, which had once provided a spectacular view of the Widow nebula, were nowhere to be found. Of course, Shepard remembered them far more vividly for the spectacular view they had provided of the piece of Sovereign that had nearly killed him three years ago.

"Looks like we get to make our own door," Shepard decided. Wrex practically started giggling at the opportunity. "EDI, where are the power readings?"

"_They are beginning to show abnormal fluctuations. I can no longer isolate any individual sources. However, I would not recommend attempting a breach at the pinnacle, as that is likely the central location of any resistance you may encounter. Without accurate information, a direct frontal assault would be unwise._"

"Good point. I guess here is as good a spot as any, then." Shepard reached into his pack for his set of explosives. He anchored them to the side of the tower, then paused to consider. "Wrex, Tali, give me your charges. Grenades, too. There's no telling how thick the armor might be, and I doubt we have time for a run back to rearm if this doesn't get us inside."

"No kill like overkill," the krogan said, handing over his ration of explosives.

Once the charges were set and wired together, Shepard took out his detonator. "We'd better stand back. Way back." With no cover available, they moved several dozen meters off to be safe. With nods to Wrex and Tali, he hit the trigger.

There was no sound from the explosion in the vacuum, and the gout of flame didn't survive long, but they felt the vibrations of the detonation through their feet. The whole tower seemed to buck several centimeters. They made their way forward, and found a pleasantly large hole in the side of the tower. Through the haze of smoldering metal and circuitry, the glint of artificial light could be seen within.

"Let's go," Shepard said, and jumped through.

His balance was thrown for a loop with the unexpected return of artificial gravity. His eyes told him he was falling down through the hole, but his inner ear gave him a rude awakening when he subsequently fell straight back _up,_ slamming headfirst into the floor on the other side.

Because the Presidium had been designed around rotational gravity, the floors of most of the tower were actually set parallel to the outer walls. Before, only the topmost section, the Council Chambers, had been equipped with standard artificial gravity to give a true "vertical" orientation.

That logic seemed to have been preserved, but nothing else of the of the tower's interior was recognizable. In fact, there was nothing to recognize. Shepard looked around, finding himself in a bare, blank hallway, lit by faint lamps that seemed to glow from within the walls themselves. Here too were some signs of the overload that had coursed through the structure, with charred sections of wall and a few darkened light panels.

"Watch the first step," he warned Tali and Wrex. "Move through headfirst, gravity's active on the other side."

Tali was the first to follow him. She dove through the hole, and seemed only mildly perturbed when gravity took hold and brought her back to her feet. "Strange," she commented. "Why would they maintain the orientation of the corridors, but then run artificial gravity to them anyway?"

Wrex charged through their makeshift door, landing on both feet with perfect balance. "We can ask a keeper if we find one, but I think we've got some better targets."

The krogan was right, they had more pressing problems. Shepard pointed them down the hallway towards the top of the tower, and set a quick pace. The lack of cover in the bare passage worried him. If they ran into any Cerberus troops here, it would get bloody.

Ahead of them, the hallway curved. Not left or right, but up. "Looks like the gravity shifts up ahead. We must be at the pinnacle." He motioned them to stop where the corridor bent. Lying on his back, Shepard pushed himself forward slowly with his legs, creeping until he could see around the corner of what was, to him, the ceiling.

His caution paid off. Two Cerberus troopers in full armor were in plain view, milling at another turn a short ways down the corridor. From his back, his head was at their feet, and he tried to shake the disorienting impression that they were standing on the walls of a vertical shaft.

Sitting up to face his companions, he held up two fingers, then pointed to Tali, and finally pointed to the opposite side of the floor from himself. He laid back down, and the quarian mimicked his posture (something Wrex would have had a great deal of difficulty doing), edging forward. She gave Shepard a nod when she was in position.

The lack of cover in the hallways and the element of surprise made it almost painfully easy. A single burst of fire from an assault rifle combined with a shotgun blast into the confined space, and their enemies were down before they even knew they were in danger.

Negotiating the corner proved tricky by comparison. The commander stayed on his back, pushing himself around the bend in the hallway, until the new force of gravity took over and he was pulled to the new floor, landing on his hands and knees. Wrex and Tali followed his lead, with the krogan again proving unexpectedly nimble in the bargain.

"If the keepers did rearrange this place, they sure didn't do it with convenience in mind," Tali said under her breath.

"Sure they did," countered Wrex. "Just their convenience, not ours."

The three of them approached the next bend. The corridor hung right, reversing its course on the way up a steep ramp. After a short rise, the hallway bent 180 degrees again, this time to the left, with the back wall continuing upwards into the rounded sweep of a high, domed ceiling. Past the second turn the ramp continued up, opening onto the floor at the outer edge of a large chamber. Shepard followed the ramp, dropping to his stomach halfway up the incline. He inched forward until he could peer over the edge into the room beyond.

The pinnacle of the Citadel Tower looked larger than he remembered the space being. It probably was, as it was now a single room, a windowless dome of blank white walls. The room was strangely bright. The illumination did not come from the panels that had lit the corridor they had first entered, however, but instead from a massive, shifting ball of light at the center of the room.

It was the only feature the space had, but that made it no less spectacular. It was like looking at a planetarium from the outside, a spherical holographic construct that spun and shifted, ever-changing. He was reminded of atomic models, with their core of protons and neutrons wrapped in a speeding cloud of electrons, only here the electrons were pictures, text, and odd three-dimensional shapes, too bright and thick to see through to what lay within.

He tore his gaze away from the projections, forcing himself to scan the rest of the room. A ring of Cerberus troops surrounded the hologram, as though guarding it.

Shepard ducked back out of sight, thankful that his brief distraction hadn't caused him to be spotted. He turned to his squadmates. "I count ten hostiles. The room is empty except for some kind of holographic interface in the center, and they're surrounding it."

"Anyone inside the interface?" Wrex wondered.

"Maybe. The projections were too thick to see through."

"This should be simple," said Tali. "We can use the ramp for cover."

"If we make our first shots count, yes. Otherwise we're sitting in a chokepoint."

"And those are always great fun to attack through," Wrex groused.

Tali returned her shotgun to the mount at the small of her back, and brought out her pistol. With a quick check on the heat sink's capacity, she nodded. "Ready."

They crept forward, getting as close to the top of the ramp as they could without being seen. It was a tougher prospect for the krogan and his massive armored hump, and he was forced to stay a meter or so further down. Shepard held up three fingers, and slowly counted down. When he made a fist, he leapt to his feet and fired.

He dropped one with his first volley, and to his right Tali felled another with three rapid pistol rounds. A split-second later, a burst from Wrex's assault rifle took down a third, but their opening salvo was all they managed. A storm of projectiles from more than half a dozen automatic weapons sprayed back at them before they could even search for their second targets, forcing them back down the ramp as the top edge was riddled with gunfire.

"I guess they finally realized their two men in the hallway weren't there anymore," Shepard observed dryly.

"Sure would be nice to have some grenades about now," Wrex grumbled, over the chatter of bullets hitting the wall behind them.

"Any ideas, Shepard? I'm pretty sure we can't just wait for them to run out of ammo."

He scowled, trying to think. Pieces of shrapnel were falling like rain, and ricochets were pinging off their kinetic barriers.

"_Shepard!_" EDI's voice called urgently over the radio. "_Power output across the Presidium is increasing rapidly, and I am detecting a massive surge at the apex of the tower. It is already approaching levels dangerous to organic life._"

"Oh, good," spat Wrex. "We needed a complication."

"Wrex—"

"_Shepard! This is Hackett!_"

He was quite certain he had never heard the man actually sound distressed before. Not even during the fall of Earth had his glacial calm shown even the barest sign of cracking. "Admiral?"

"_What the hell is going on there? We have EM spikes coming from the derelicts over Luna! The Reapers are reactivating!_"

"Ugh," the krogan muttered. "Me and my big mouth."

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* * *

***A/N-** Thanks again to those who review: Mr. Eclipse, CP1064, Theodur, and badkidoh


	9. Chapter Eight: Reunion

**Chapter Eight**

**REUNION**

The SSV _Orizaba_ was the pride of the Systems Alliance Fifth Fleet. A _Kilimanjaro-_class dreadnought, she was one of the deadliest ships in existence. Unlike her older _Everest_-class sisters, she was built to adhere not just to the theories of space combat, but the experience of it in the wake of the First Contact War. A state-of-the-art weapon, she had once been nearly without peer among the stars. That belief had been shaken by many of the things she had borne witness to in the past few months.

She had been present for the hasty muster of the fleets in the opening hours of the invasion, and the subsequent rout at Arcturus Station. She had watched over the construction of the Crucible, as their best hope for victory had been assembled piece by untested piece. And she had been there amidst the combined might of the galaxy as the Battle of Earth raged, a desperate struggle whose success had been measured in minutes bought, instead of enemies destroyed.

Through it all, Admiral Steven Hackett had held his place on the command deck. Whether they had been fleeing for their lives or fighting for them, he had never let himself be shaken by circumstances. Despair was the death of discipline, and loss of discipline was the death of soldiers. That did not mean it had ever been easy.

Especially now.

"Sensors, what do you have for me?"

"We have spikes in energy output across the board. Varying levels of activity from all contacts, but we're seeing possible signs of mass effect field generation."

"Any movement?"

"No, sir. They're still stationary."

"Do you read kinetic barriers or weapons activity?"

"Not yet."

He punched a button on his command console, opening a comm channel to the combined fleet in orbit over Luna. "This is Admiral Hackett. You're all seeing the same things we are, no doubt. We cannot allow the Reaper fleet to reactivate under any circumstances. All ships, fire at will."

Not a single vessel hesitated. A thousand flashes in the night gave birth to a thousand new stars. Javelins, disruptor torpedoes, ferrous slugs, and the beams from Thanix cannons lanced out. The deck beneath Hackett's feet shuddered under the indomitable force of Newton's Third Law, as the _Orizaba_'s own main gun accelerated a twenty kilogram payload into a destructive projectile moving at a fraction of lightspeed.

At their range, the impacts started almost instantaneously. The flashes from hits were eclipsed by the bursts of secondary explosions. The darkened hulks drifting through space above the moon were suddenly revealed to the naked eye by the eruptions of yellow and orange as the bombardment tore into targets previously visible only to sensors. Reaper vessels had proven nearly impervious to conventional attacks in combat, where only massive, focused bombardment had been enough to punch through a single craft's kinetic barriers. Even without those shields, the ships were damnably sturdy.

That was one of the reasons they had been left intact in the first place. The space above Earth was already choked with debris, and further damage and casualties on the surface from reentering objects was going to be a fact of life for years to come. Blithely adding the pieces of hundreds more Reaper vessels to that hazard was irresponsible, and given the possible benefits of examination and reverse-engineering of the intact ships, borderline foolish.

Now they were going to find out if leaving the ships alone would prove an even more costly mistake.

Waves of weapons fire flowed out from the fleet, with the shooting star-like streaks of relativistic projectiles flashing through the gaps. The withering hail crashed into armor, boiling away metal and vaporizing less durable materials on impact. Destroyers and dreadnoughts crumpled by the dozen, but many and more ships still waited. Whatever those machines might feel, if they could feel, at the sight of their fellows dying like victims of a firing squad, Hackett hoped they would not get the chance to fight back. Reapers had proven tough enough foes already. That was before they had been beaten, before the purpose they had fulfilled without fail for untold billions of years had been thwarted.

He didn't want to see what they'd do if they were angry.

* * *

The hail of bullets ripping into the wall behind Shepard, Tali, and Wrex would have been impressive, if it weren't also pinning them between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

"Shepard, we don't have time for this!"

"I know, Wrex! I'm thinking!"

"Think faster! I didn't plan on getting filled full of holes today."

"Life is full of surprises like that," Tali quipped. She tried creeping closer to the edge of the ramp, but shied back before her head had even reached the threshold as a renewed barrage tore away at the edge of the floor.

"Tali, can you get a drone up there to distract them?"

"Not a problem."

"Good, wait for my signal. Get it on the right side of the room if you can. I'll draw their fire, and then the two of you will follow me up."

"There's too many of them, Shepard. You'll be shredded!"

"I'll fortify my shields, but I'll be counting on the two of you to get them down fast."

"All right," said Wrex, locking a fresh thermal clip into his rifle. "We've got your back."

Shepard took a deep breath, readying the overload command for his kinetic barriers. "On three," he said. "One—"

Amidst the constant hail of bullets, a larger projectile arced towards them. The hand-sized cylinder struck the ramp in front of them with a muted clink, and bounced over their heads to rattle to a stop against the wall at their backs. "Grenade!" barked Wrex.

"Three!" shouted Shepard.

The plan, of course, did not survive contact with the enemy. All three of them scrambled over the crest of the ramp, a blue haze sparking to life as their shields repulsed the deadly barrage they faced. A flash of pink and a shower of sparks preceded shouts of surprise from the far side of the room, which meant Tali's drone was deployed. Shepard sprinted left from the top of the ramp, firing full-auto back towards the center of the room, aiming only enough to ensure he wasn't shooting at one of his allies. He heard Wrex roar as the krogan charged headlong into the midst of the Cerberus troops.

Warning lights began flashing across his HUD, indicating his shields were near failure. He lunged to the floor, sliding across the ground on his left side. Adrenaline poured into his bloodstream, and the fury of combat seemed to disappear into the dull thud of his heartbeat. He kept the trigger of his Revenant pulled, watching the indicator for his thermal clip tick down with agonizing slowness. His body felt heavy as he dragged his weapon from one target to the next, and his foes moved even more sluggishly as their weapons lowered towards him.

With a half-heard crackle, the mass effect fields around his body collapsed, unable to absorb any more energy from incoming fire. His weapon abruptly lurched off-target, and a split-second later he felt a series of tugs along his right side, turning him onto his back. Stars exploded in his vision, and time returned to normal in concert with the wave of pain that erupted through his right arm and chest.

Shepard gasped for breath. His left hand tightened beneath the barrel of his rifle, which kept the weapon from sliding away after his other arm went numb. He blinked away the whitewash of stars in his vision, knowing he had to get back on his feet, even as he wondered why he wasn't already dead.

A few paces to his left, one of the Cerberus troopers fell to his knees, weapon clattering to the ground an instant before the man himself collapsed face-first on the floor. Another second passed, and Shepard grimaced with effort as he shifted the handle of his weapon awkwardly into his left hand. Leaning heavily on his elbow, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. No sooner had he sat up than a red-armored hand grabbed him by the collar, hauling him the rest of the way to his feet. That same hand then slammed into his shoulder with nearly enough force to make him drop his rifle.

"Shepard, that had to be the stupidest, craziest, most reckless and chaotic attack I've ever been a part of. Promise you'll never do that again." Wrex stared at him, sporting several holes and gouges in his thick armor. One of his legs was particularly mangled, and the krogan was leaning on his assault rifle like a crutch. "Unless I'm with you."

Every breath was agony, but his body was still demanding oxygen. Every muscle in his body was burning. It was a forceful reminder that he had just risen from a hospital bed a few days ago, not that there would be much point in stopping to acknowledge his recklessness now. He looked around the room in shock.

Ten white-armored bodies were on the floor, surrounding the glowing sphere at the center of the room. Tali's attack drone drifted above the ground, spinning idly, while the quarian herself was limping towards them, clutching her left side. The omnitool was out over her right wrist, and she manipulated the internal controls with her right hand. Her arm was noticeably unsteady.

"Tali, are you all right?"

"Seals are holding," she gritted out. "I'm fine for now."

Shepard nodded. All of them probably needed attention from Dr. Chakwas sooner rather than later. The fact that any of them was still standing was probably a miracle. Shepard forced himself to start walking towards the central projection. "We need to figure out what Cerberus was up to here, and turn it off again."

"I'm afraid you're already too late for that, Shepard."

The commander froze at the sound of the new voice, breath locked in his throat. His jaw clenched hard enough to shatter teeth. The blinding brightness of the swirling projections at the center of the room dimmed. The dizzying orbit of unfamiliar characters slowed, revealing the man standing in their midst. A man who could not be there. A man who was dead… just as Shepard had thought himself dead.

An Illusive Man.

* * *

Kaidan Alenko blinked against the brightness of the sun in the fresh-made clearing. The escaping frigate had vanished beneath the horizon. They had already raised the alarm, but though that particular problem was now beyond their reach, it didn't mean their job was done.

"Vega, you all right?"

"Here, Major!" was the shouted reply. The burly marine was jogging towards him across the clearing, hurdling downed trees and Cerberus corpses along the way. His surviving teammate was keeping pace a few steps behind. "Those bastards sure left in a hurry."

"Without secrecy, escape was their only option," said Javik. "They no longer possess the strength the face us, and so they flee."

"They flattened most of their own guys to do it, and they can't have that many to spare."

"Don't be so sure of that," Alenko countered. "What's a few grunts when they can control husks?"

Vega scowled. "Major, I think I finally came up with a nickname for you. From now on, you're 'Downer.' Sir."

Kaidan snorted. "Yeah, I suppose I am." And he had more good news to spread, he realized, keying on his comm. "Jacob, get the word out to HQ at the Blue Zone. I don't know how they're doing it, but if Cerberus starts waking up husks we need to be ready."

"_I think they know, Major_," Taylor replied. "_Hackett just put the whole fleet at general quarters, and not because of the frigate you found_."

"What's going on up there?"

"_Let's just say husks are the least of our worries. The Reapers over Luna decided to stop playing possum_."

"Shit. Vega, where's your shuttle? We need to get back to the Blue Zone ASAP."

The lieutenant pointed north. "This way, right outside the park."

"_Better hurry, Major,_" warned Taylor. "_We're not reading anything planetside yet, but HQ has just issued an emergency recall. Looks like we're getting ready to turtle up in the Blue Zone._"

A protest about the danger to the civilians was on the tip of his tongue, but Kaidan swallowed it, tasting bile. They could no more secure the planet at this point than they could have when the Reapers first arrived. Taylor – and Alliance Command, for that matter – were just as aware of that fact as he was. "Let's go," he spat.

They quick-timed for the edge of the park, and in less than a minute they could see daylight through the trees. They emerged onto the paved London street, where less than fifty feet away the Kodiak that had delivered team two was already spooling up. Of course, it was doing so from directly beneath a _Sovereign_-class Reaper. It was the same dreadnought they had seen on the way in, fallen against a skyscraper on the park's northern border, but being in its shadow now made it feel a whole lot more dangerous than it had before.

"Shit, Vega, you picked a hell of a place to park!"

"What? How should I have known the damn things were gonna go all Frankenstein on us?"

"It appears to still be inactive," Javik observed. "I suggest we leave before circumstances change."

"I say we listen to the man," the second team two soldier said.

"I am not a man," Javik growled.

"Argue about semantics _after_ we're airborne!" Alenko shouted over his shoulder, breaking for the shuttle. The other three took his suggestion.

The port hatch opened for them as they approached. They jumped in with little care for dignity, tumbling over each other in the Kodiak's passenger hold.

"Get us moving, Speedy!" Vega barked, as soon as they were all aboard.

"Aye, aye," the pilot acknowledged. The thrusters popped, pushing the shuttle into the air, and the pitch of the engines increased before the hatch had even started to close.

They turned southwest. Out the hatch, Alenko stared at the Reaper as they gained altitude, rising above its crumpled legs, and then the upper sections of its mollusk-like body. A series of blue sparks coursed over it. Kaidan watched in horror as azure lights flickered to life in ones and twos. With a mechanical whirring that overwhelmed the rattle of grinding concrete and steel, the Reaper began to rise.

"_Step on—!_" he began to shout.

The rest of his command was lost beneath the ear-splitting horror of a familiar, thunderous groan.

* * *

"Admiral, fighter wings have exhausted their heavy ordnance."

"Recall and rearm," Hackett ordered, with calmness in his voice that he did not feel. He resisted the urge to tug at his collar. That impulse was not out of nervousness, but a response to the rising temperatures on the bridge. "What's our radiation status?"

"Heat sinks are approaching 70% saturation. We can't keep up this level of fire much longer, sir."

Heat was the tactical resource every naval commander had to account for. Ships could fight only so long as the incredible thermal energy they generated in combat could be exhausted by their radiation panels. In deep space, they could have fired and maneuvered for hours, but they were close enough to the Sun that even the subjectively low temperatures of planetary space were rapidly bringing them to the end of their endurance. They had been unloading on their targets with every scrap of firepower the fleet possessed, but less than half of the idle Reaper vessels had been destroyed. At this point, if the remaining enemies started fighting back, their ships might not even have the ability to maneuver without roasting their crews alive.

Standard doctrine would dictate a withdrawal through FTL to vent heat, and then a return to combat. Unfortunately, retreat was a luxury they did not possess. The Admiral allowed himself a scowl. His best alternative violated more rules of spaceborne combat than he could count. "This is Hackett to all ships. Shut down engines, GARDIAN systems, ECM hardware, and all sensors not linked to targeting computers. Maintain fire."

He could feel the eyes of most of the bridge crew on him. After a noticeable pause, there was a chorus of shaky "Aye, aye"s, which thankfully came before Hackett had to repeat the command.

Shutting down those systems would buy them time, at the cost of turning every ship in the fleet into blind, stationary, defenseless weapons. He had just transformed the greatest coalition of deep space warships ever assembled into nothing more than ancient artillery pieces.

"All wings have acknowledged," the communications officer reported.

"Status of targets?"

"Energy output has leveled off. Still reading no movement or weapons fire." The instant that changed, the battle was over. The fate of the galaxy was now a game of chicken between a sprinter and a brick wall.

Hackett could only hope that they were the wall.

* * *

"Don't look so surprised, Shepard. Surely you'd realized the truth of our little encounter by now?"

Commander Shepard stared at the face of a man he had watched put a bullet through his own brain. His shock gave way to anger. "One of these days, when I convince someone to shoot themselves, they'll _stay_ dead."

"You give yourself too much credit." A pair of glowing eyes narrowed, surrounded by folds of skin cracked and sickly grey. "Though I suppose I should thank you, strange as that may sound."

With his right arm still numb and useless, he raised his rifle with his left. He braced it against his shoulder. "Go to hell," Shepard spat. He fired.

The shots bounced off the glowing sphere his target stood within, the flashes of their impacts were muted against the much brighter backdrop.

The Illusive Man smiled. It was a leer fit for the face of death, set among skin turned to ash by whatever experiments the man had subjected himself to. "I was there, Shepard. Or did you already forget? You pulled me out."

"What the hell happened to this guy?" Wrex grumbled, scowling over the scope of his rifle. "I always knew he was a bit off, but this is a whole new brand of crazy."

The Illusive Man's rictus grin turned into a scowl. With a glance, a wave of light burst from the sphere. It slammed into Wrex, throwing the krogan across the room. He flew into the wall next to the entry ramp, and crumpled to the floor. "Silence, krogan," he spat. "Your betters are speaking."

"That's impossible," Tali said shakily. She fell to a knee, still clutching her side.

"Hardly. A crude display, to cow a crude beast. These are the least of my gifts."

"You're still indoctrinated," Shepard breathed, his voice dull with shock. "Still using the Reapers' powers, doing their bidding."

The Illusive Man laughed, wagging a finger. "Oh, no. Not this time, Shepard. The Reapers are gone, you saw to that. And I thank you for it. You were right, you see, and I was wrong. This much I can admit. They were far too strong, and even with the Crucible I could never have controlled them."

"I wasn't there. _You_ weren't there. Not really. It was…"

"You haven't realized yet, have you? Well, I suppose it took me a while to recognize the deception as well. No, Shepard, we weren't on the Citadel. We _were_ someplace else, though. Where, exactly, I can't say. A dream? A vision? Perhaps. But my guess is we were among the Reapers' consciousness. Indoctrinated minds, bound together by their will, interpreting an incomprehensible struggle as best we could."

"No. I don't believe it. It couldn't have been real."

"It wasn't real," the Illusive Man agreed. He gestured to the room around them. "But this is."

"Then how? How are you doing this?"

"The answer was so beautifully simple that I never even considered it at the time. We learned on Horizon to control Reaper technology, but we could never do more than override them. Subvert their commands… their will. But with the Reapers gone, so is the very strength that resisted us. I have control, and now there is nothing to hold me back."

"You're a monster," Shepard growled.

"I am what humanity needs me to be. What you might have been. I hoped, once, that we could make the other races realize our greatness. Now, I can simply make them accept it through force."

"The Reapers themselves couldn't win, and each and every one of them was a consciousness of millions. What makes you think you can do better?"

The Illusive Man shrugged. "It will take time, certainly. But I've already accomplished more than you know."

"You're the one who was reactivating the husks on Earth," said Tali. "And the ships over the moon."

"If you're really just realizing that, I'm insulted. Then again, powering up the ships over Luna wasn't done for _your_ benefit. You're right of course; I can't master fleets of Reapers or armies of husks… yet. But I have everything I need now. The tools, the knowledge, and the time to take advantage of them both. Practice makes perfect, and I've always believed that a human mind is capable of anything."

"We won't give you that time. You'll never succeed. We'll fight you, and stop you."

"Your determination is admirable, but misplaced. With enough time and sympathetic faces I'd once hoped to sway you to Cerberus' cause, but I never counted on it. Your loyalty never has been to institutions. Oh, you swear your oaths to king and country, but you won't hesitate to go your own way if you feel it's right. You proved that against Saren. Against the Collectors, too, bitter pill though it was for me at the time. That predictability has made you more useful as an enemy as you ever could have been as an ally."

"I never accepted your lies. I've stopped every plot you've hatched, and I'll keep stopping you."

"You think you've been a thorn in my side? More like an inconvenience. Look back, and ask yourself if a single one of your successes kept me from accomplishing my true goal. You were a safety, Shepard. A contingency. I'm not so foolish as you might think; I knew meddling with Reaper technology had risks. And I was right. But even in that moment, when you stopped me from taking control of the Reapers before I was ready, all you did was ensure my success."

"You're lying."

"Am I? Or do I know you better than you'd like? I told you before: I _made_ you, Shepard."

The blow struck closer than he wanted to admit, but Shepard couldn't allow that to show. "No. You may have brought me back to life, but you didn't change me."

"Don't listen to him, Shepard," Tali gasped. She was breathing heavily, and the left side of her torso was soaked with blood. Medigel and section seals could only do so much. "We all know you're the same man who's always led us. _I _know it."

"How touching," the Illusive Man drawled. Another wave lashed out.

"_NO!_" Shepard yelled. His hand reached out for her, but Tali was already twisting through the air. She slammed into the wall with an audible crack, and fell.

"I'm sorry about this, Shepard. I doubt you can believe that, but I am. The truth is I got what I needed from the Citadel the moment I regained access to its archives. You came after me, but like every time before, there was never a moment when you could keep me from my goal."

"I'll kill you for this," Shepard growled, tearing his eyes away from the frighteningly still forms of his friends. "I'll rip you apart with my bare hands if I have to."

"I know you would. People so rarely behave as we might expect. And that's why even a reliable tool must eventually be discarded. Goodbye, Shep—"

The commander was thrown from his feet, but not from any blow struck by his enemy. He tumbled wildly across the floor, and in dizzying flashes he watched the roof of the Citadel Tower vanish in gouts of flame. He slammed into the wall, nauseous and disoriented, staring up into a field of stars.

And in the middle of those stars, bright silver and blue, was the _Normandy_.

A crackle came over his comm. "—_that take the goddamn jamming out? I repeat, _Normandy_ to shore party, is anyone there?_"

"Joker?"

"_It's good to hear your voice, Commander! We lost contact as soon as you entered the pinnacle. Sorry I didn't knock, but EDI said if we waited on you much longer, the power surge in the Presidium was gonna fry you._"

"Joker, target the hologram in the middle of this room and hit it with everything you've got!"

"_Sir? But—_"

"Don't argue with me, just _FIRE!_"

The nose of the frigate twitched, aligning with the spherical display. The Illusive Man looked at Shepard. For some reason, he was still smiling. "So predictable."

The center of the room exploded. Shepard shielded his eyes against the blast. It was an instinctive gesture, and meaningless as he felt the Citadel Tower shaking to pieces around him. He felt the shockwaves from the impacts pressing him against the wall. Part of him hoped that he and his friends were far enough away to survive, all thrown to the edges of the room. But another part of him, a part he cursed, a part he'd fought against with every decision, every choice, every sacrifice, howled with satisfaction at the death of an enemy. At a victory, no matter the cost.

The shaking subsided, and the explosions dissipated into the vacuum. Two-thirds of the floor was gone, torn away by the impact of _Normandy_'s weapons. Shepard blinked against the glare, squinting through the cloud of rubble tumbling weightlessly around them.

In the middle of the room the holographic sphere still twisted, flickering unsteadily. The images slowly vanished, fading away into the nothingness of absent light.

And within them, still smiling, the Illusive Man vanished as well.

* * *

"Admiral, heat sinks are at critical capacity! We have to break off the attack!"

Steven Hackett gripped the rail around the central display on the _Orizaba_'s bridge, knuckles white. "All ships, cease fire! Emergency system shutdown. Activate all radiation panels and exhaust ports."

The bombardment from the fleet on the derelict Reapers over Luna slackened, then stopped. The allied ships hung motionless, strips along their hulls glowing white-hot. They seemed to stare, furious, at the foes who had dared survive their wrath. More than three-quarters of the Reaper vessels in the moon's orbit were now useless slag. The coalition fleet had done all they could, but in the end, it still might not have been enough.

"Any ship that can vent enough heat to resume firing is free to do so at their discretion. Sensors, stay sharp. If a single one of those ships so much as twitches, I want to know immediately."

"Admiral," the lieutenant at the sensor station called, "I'm reading a _drop_ in energy output from all targets."

Hackett frowned. "Confirm that with the other ships."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Sir!" the communications officer shouted. "We're receiving an all-channels distress call from Earth. I think it's Major Alenko."

"Put it on."

"_—is Harvest Command to the coalition fleet. Come in!_"

"We read you, Major. What's your status?"

"_We are in pursuit of a Reaper dreadnought in low Earth orbit. Requesting immediate assistance!_"

"Say again, Major? All vessels over Luna are still stationary. Did you say pursuit?"

"_Affirmative! One vessel lifted off from London. It's already crippled the _Einstein_. A few ships are trying to interdict the FTL flight paths, but they won't last much longer. We need all the firepower you can spare._"

Hackett stared mutely as the central display shifted to a tactical analysis of low Earth orbit. A solitary red blip was blazing through the upper atmosphere, unperturbed by a swarm of frigates and fighters that were no more hindrance than gnats. Projecting a course, it seemed the hostile was not moving towards the fleet, or any other target of significance. It was merely pushing hard to break through the debris field above the planet, beyond which it could safely escape into FTL.

"Sir," the lieutenant on sensors interrupted hesitantly, "readings have been confirmed. All Reaper vessels in range have gone dark. No energy signatures of any kind."

"_Admiral, did you copy?_"

In a display of emotion, the likes of which not even the most veteran member of the _Orizaba_'s bridge crew had ever seen before, the Fleet Admiral of the Systems Alliance Navy clenched a fist… and slammed down onto the railing with enough force that everyone there could hear the _snap_ of bone.

"We copy, Major," Hackett ground out through clenched teeth. "But it's too late. We don't have anything left to stop them."

Silence descended on the bridge and the intercom. Heads hung, and realization of their failure set in. They could not have known. Not a man among them would have done differently. But the escape of a Reaper vessel, likely in the hands of Cerberus, was potentially devastating. No ship in space, and likely no fleet in the entire devastated galaxy beyond the system they were in, could match the power of a single _Sovereign_-class vessel. They were the only ones who could have stopped it. Even if it had been impossible, it was their duty to try. And they had failed.

The silence was shattered by a new voice on the same all-channels comm broadcast. "_To hell with that! This is the SSV _Normandy_, we are in pursuit!_"

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* * *

***A/N* -** As always, thanks to those who take time to review: THEJOY69, Mattmaster112, blackwind2254, and Random Reader.


	10. Chapter Nine: Unending

**Chapter Nine**

**UNENDING**

Shepard felt himself being lifted up. The _Normandy_'s attack against the Illusive Man had taken out artificial gravity, along with most of the rest of the top level of the Citadel Tower, yet somehow he still felt weighed down. "Hang on, sir. We're going to get you out of here," a half-familiar voice of one of the ship's crew said. Shepard's left arm was slung over the man's shoulder, and they started walking. The commander was thankful for the weightlessness, since it meant he didn't have to lean too hard on the man trying to help him along.

"Tali?" Shepard ground out. "Wrex?" Every breath burned in his chest. His right arm still hung useless at his side, numb and throbbing. Looking up, he saw the shuttle waiting for them at the edge of what was left of the floor.

"They're already aboard." They drifted across the gap and through the open hatch of the Kodiak.

The return of gravity nearly sent Shepard to his knees, but he settled for disentangling himself from the nameless marine and leaning heavily against one of the benches. The hatch closed behind him. "EDI, what's our status?"

"Energy output on the Presidium is nearing critical levels," the AI's voice came back over his comm. "If you had remained much longer, you would have been killed."

"That was the idea, apparently," Shepard said wearily.

"Commander, what exactly did you have us shoot at down there?" Joker wondered. "Besides, you know, _you_."

"A ghost," he replied. "In more ways than one. I'll tell you more once I'm back on the bridge."

Not that that was an easy task. Dr. Chakwas was waiting in the hangar, and only the severity of Wrex and Tali's injuries distracted her enough to allow Shepard to escape to the elevator. The walk from there to the forward bulkhead felt like a marathon.

"How's the fleet?" he asked, reaching out to steady himself on the back of Joker's chair.

"Still taking target practice on the Reapers over Luna. Whatever Cerberus did to wake them up, they aren't in fighting shape yet."

"It's not Cerberus controlling them. It's the Illusive Man."

Joker took the news with surprising equanimity. "Well, that explains a lot. Let me guess, what we shot at was his usual smug-by-proxy self?"

"Yeah, a hologram. He was manipulating some systems remotely, just like he is the Reapers. If you hadn't shown up, he literally would have talked us to death. It was all just a trap."

"I find that unlikely," said EDI. "If his sole purpose was to kill you, this was far from the most efficient method."

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear the suggestion that you're aware of efficient methods for killing the Commander," Joker muttered. The AI shot the pilot a glare.

"What do you mean, EDI?" Shepard asked.

"You are well aware of the Illusive Man's penchant for duplicity, Shepard. His plans are never straightforward, and a plot intended to kill you would not be so needlessly complex. Our chase and arrival at the Presidium would have been almost impossible to predict."

"You may be right. The Illusive Man wasn't just trying to kill me. He was looking for something, but he'd already found it by the time we arrived."

"Yeah, well, whatever he picked up at the souvenir shop will be all anyone gets off the Presidium for a while. Commander, wherever you want us to go, it needs to be away from here. This place is about to turn extra crispy, remember?"

"Move us away, Joker."

"Aye, aye." With a few gestures over the controls, the _Normandy_ swung away from the ruins of the Presidium. "You know, I thought this place was already fried. What the heck is overloading anyway?"

"It appears that a subset of systems related to the Crucible was all that was affected in the previous detonation. The remainder of the Citadel's network and power grid were mostly intact, which the Illusive Man appears to have exploited."

"You could say that," Shepard grimaced. "He was going to kill us and wipe out any trace of what he was looking for in one blow."

"He went one for two, I guess. Any idea where to look for him, Commander?"

"Maybe. Any sign of our friend?"

"You mean the _Normandy_ sporting a goatee?" the pilot countered sourly. "Not a glimpse. EDI's got the modified sensor protocols running, but no hits yet. If they're moving slow enough to avoid debris, they've still gotta be close."

"Something's not right about this. The Illusive Man didn't need to go to the Citadel in person, though that doesn't mean he's not aboard the SR-3. But why would he activate the Reapers over the moon now if he could have snuck out at any time on a stealth ship? He's still too many steps ahead of us."

An indicator on the corner of Joker's display started flashing red. "Commander, we're picking up an all-channels alert from the far side of the planet."

"_This is Harvest Command to the coalition fleet. Come in!_"

"That's Kaidan!" Shepard recognized the voice at once. "What's his location?"

Joker brought up a tactical display on his console. "Looks like it's coming from… oh, shit. That's not good."

Shepard stared at the red IFF indicator. "Is that—?"

"_We read you, Major_," Hackett's voice came over the comm. "_What's your status?_"

"_We are in pursuit of a Reaper dreadnought in low Earth orbit. Requesting immediate assistance!_"

"Shit," the pilot muttered, talking over a question from Hackett. "I was really hoping that was a sensor malfunction."

"What have we got that's close enough to stop that thing?"

Joker zoomed out the tactical display. "Not much. There are some cruisers nearby that were escorting the… Damn, looks like they took down the _Einstein_. She's dead in space, along with her escort."

Realization dawned on Shepard, bright as sunrise above an atmosphere. "The Illusive Man is on that ship."

"I concur," said EDI. "It is the most logical means of escape under the circumstances."

"…_it's too late_," Hackett's voice, even rougher than usual, came over the comm."_We don't have anything left to stop them_."

Before the order could even leave Shepard's mouth, Joker had already punched the broadcast button. "To hell with that! This is the SSV _Normandy_, we are in pursuit!"

"Get us moving!"

Joker's hands were already flying across the controls with almost inhuman alacrity. He'd closed the channel and thrown them to full throttle in the time it had taken Shepard to say three words. "Way ahead of you, Commander."

The SR-2 dove, using Earth's gravity well to accelerate the ship more quickly than even the most powerful drive system in the galaxy could accomplish on its own. Within seconds, all manner of alerts and proximity warnings were beeping and blaring for the pilot's attention. Joker paid them no mind.

Outside the viewports, Shepard could see the flames of reentry licking across the bow. They were well beyond the recommended velocity for any kind of orbital navigation, nevermind atmospheric maneuvering. If nothing else, they would be an impressive sight for anyone looking at the night sky over Asia.

"Jeff, most would consider this course and speed to be unsafe."

"No, EDI, this is perfectly safe. The Illusive Man with a pet Reaper? _That's_ unsafe."

Their descent leveled off a few miles above Egypt. The deck jumped beneath them as Joker threw more power into the drive core, reducing their mass for the ascent back out of Earth's gravity. The pilot leaned forward in his chair, his hands no more than two flesh-colored blurs over the controls. Shepard wrapped his left arm around the pilot's headrest, feeling their acceleration increase as they climbed.

"EDI, how long before that Reaper can enter FTL?"

"At present speed, one minute."

"Thirty seconds to range," Joker said. "Arm all weapons."

"Stand by. I am reading an atmospheric disturbance behind us."

"Wait, is that—?"

"Jeff, evasive maneuvers!"

Shouts of surprise came from the crew stations aft as the _Normandy_ lurched left in a full-thrust bank. The sirens blaring from Joker's console became even more insistent, and Shepard could only hope that it was his imagination that made him hear the roar of the drive core through the length of the ship and two full decks.

The cobalt beam of a Thanix cannon passed through where they had been just a split-second before.

"That was too close."

"Yeah, okay, so the hull burning at a few thousand degrees probably overwhelmed the stealth systems a bit." The deck shifted again as Joker threw them into another evasive turn.

"What about them?"

"I now have a firm contact on sensors behind us," EDI reported. "The SR-3 has pursued us into Earth's atmosphere."

"Guess they aren't going to let us go shoot down their boss without a fight."

"Jeff, they have an altitude advantage as well as a pursuit angle."

"Yeah. But they don't have me."

Another beam of relativistic molten metal scorched the air, and again Joker twisted them out of the way. "EDI, activate the ECM. Stealth system's no good now, so give 'em something to think about."

"Affirmative."

Even artificial gravity could only account for so much, and when Joker rolled them over into an inverted dive, Shepard could actually feel the blood rushing to his feet as Africa filled the viewports. Hearing the whine of wind resistance through the hull was a new experience, and the sound grew louder as Joker continued pushing them through the plunge. The commander watched on the tactical display as their pursuers started angling down to match their course.

"You aren't in a vacuum anymore, amateur," Joker hissed. "And I don't have time to play with newbies." Shepard could see the feral grin spreading over the pilot's face. Just as their dive reached pure vertical, with the Sahara Desert rushing up to meet them, Joker stabbed several keys. The throttle eased back as he pushed positive current into the drive core, increasing their mass. As a result the _Normandy's_ velocity slowed only slightly, while all but removing the engines' power from their propulsion. "That's it… keep tracking us… think you're getting close, huh?"

Joker was his pilot. Shepard had every confidence in him, but times like these were when he felt most out of his depth as the _Normandy_'s captain, left to watch events unfold with little he could do himself to affect them. Their radial velocity was allowing the other ship to close in on a weapons lock as they continued to dive. Threat detectors began adding their warble to the chorus of alarms filling the bridge, but at this point, like the dogfight in the graveyard outside the Collector base, there was nothing to do but trust in Joker's skill.

The pilot keyed the intercom. "This is Joker to all hands, everybody grab on to something."

"What're you planning, Joker?"

"Commander, I know you like to be all stoic and yank my chair around, but you may want to strap in for this one."

Growing more worried, Shepard moved to the empty station to the left. He belted himself in to the harness.

"All right. Almost there…" the pilot whispered. They were still angled towards the ground, and approaching it with alarming speed. "Almost there…" Their course was now at almost a perfect 45 degree angle compared to their pursuer's dive. The nose of the other ship continued dipping lower and lower as it tracked the _Normandy_'s path, coming closer to a clear shot from their main gun. The lights indicating a hostile weapons lock were beginning to flash from yellow to red. _Normandy_'s countermeasures threw out thousands of watts of white noise and radiation to try and confuse the targeting computers of their foe, while at the same time the pilots of both ships toyed with each other, making subtle shifts in speed and angle to try and force their opponent into an overcorrection. But it was only a matter of time.

The threat lights went solid red, and in that instant Joker ripped them out of their terminal descent. They blazed ahead, now parallel to the ground, streaking for the space between their pursuer and the horizon of the planet below.

To match the maneuver, the SR-3 hastened her dive. She continued to pitch forward, just as any good pilot would... in a vacuum. After all, "up" was a meaningless distinction in space, and most pilots spent so much of their time and training in that environment that a return to atmosphere required conscious adjustment. In a combat situation, the time and thought required for that adjustment meant death.

"EDI, I'm transferring main weapons to your control. I'll line you up, but I'm pretty sure you're the only person who's not going to be blacked out when we have the shot."

"Acknowledged," said the AI.

Shepard tried to swallow through a suddenly parched throat.

The _Normandy_ was more aerodynamic than most ships, but far from graceful. Without a mass effect core, she would never stay airborne. Atmospheric piloting, especially inside a gravity well, was an endless series of adjustments and corrections to the frigate's thrust and mass, which produced only the impression of true agility. A loop of any kind was not a maneuver the ship or her engines were designed to accomplish gracefully. Still, any vessel that was light enough or powerful enough could pull it off, though they had to fight against gravity – and expend precious potential energy – to do so.

What made Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau the best pilot in the Systems Alliance was the simple acknowledgement of one fact: just because you had the power to counteract the laws of physics didn't mean you couldn't use them, too.

With a series of maneuvers done so fast it could only have been instinct, Joker threw full power back into the engines. He poured negative current through the drive core, making the frigate all but weightless. In deep space, it would have been nearly enough to avert the general theory of relativity and send the ship beyond the speed of light. Now, all it did was put on a burst of speed no airborne craft in Earth's history could have hoped to match.

They closed the distance between them and the SR-3 in seconds. They didn't charge head-on; against a ship with a forward-facing main weapon that would have been suicidal, or at best they might have destroyed each other. Instead, Joker took them beneath their opponent, whose own pilot was now increasing thrust to try and power through their loop and get back on the _Normandy_'s six. But while his counterpart was now pressing his vessel to its limits just to continue his maneuver, Joker cut power. They continued forward on inertia, but a push from the maneuvering thrusters spun them about until they were flying backwards. Only a nearly weightless vessel could have accomplished such a thing in atmosphere, and even so air resistance was putting the disproportionately light ship through more turbulence than the inertial compensators could abate. Shepard could feel his teeth rattling, and tried his best to keep his skull from slamming into the headrest with enough force to knock him out.

The stunt may have pointed them towards their target, but no one, not even EDI, could hope to get a weapons lock through this amount of turbulence. Joker threw the throttle back to full. A moment later, he poured every scrap of available power into the mass effect core, turning the ship's relative mass from "feather" to "white dwarf" in the blink of an eye.

The _Normandy_ simply _stopped_.

Shepard felt his head slam back into the headrest, and no amount of padding or inertial dampening would have been enough to keep any organic being conscious through such an abrupt change in velocity. All that advanced technology allowed them to do was survive an amount of deceleration that would have otherwise been instantly lethal.

EDI, still and serene in the co-pilot's seat, smiled. And fired.

The jet of liquid metal from the Thanix cannon struck the SR-3 dead center on her ventral barriers. The shields flared for less than a second. Even the advanced cyclonic barriers were never designed to handle a direct hit from a weapon that had been reverse-engineered from Reaper technology, the same beam that had destroyed a massive Collector vessel in two blows. The shields failed, and the beam pressed on, slamming into the Silaris armor. The plating boiled away within microseconds, and the beam tore through the rest of the ship in even less time. A tremendous explosion ripped the SR-3 to pieces, the detonation of her drive core sending shivers of lighting through a clear blue sky in every direction. Her engines flew off in random directions with their last shreds of momentum, and the main hull broke apart as it fell to the Earth.

Shepard regained consciousness just in time to see the flaming remnants of their foe tumble out of sight.

"Well, that was the easy part," Joker said, shaking his head and blinking the stars out of his eyes. He wasted no more time, reducing their mass and speeding off towards the Reaper dreadnought beyond the horizon. "Damage report?"

"The stop damaged the main support struts of the starboard engine housing, and the wing has been angled aft by nine degrees. Primary feed lines to the mass effect core are showing signs of burnout," EDI informed them. "And we have numerous stress fractures throughout the superstructure. Damage control teams are already responding to automated breach reports, but I would not recommend any extended deep-space excursions until a thorough refit can be completed."

"I wonder when we'll manage one of those again. Weapons?"

"Functional, though there are fluctuations in the primary power core. I cannot guarantee performance in sustained combat. The shock of deceleration has also thrown the main Thanix cannon mounts out of alignment, but it is within correctable tolerances."

"Our next target is gonna be pretty tough to miss, anyway." The tactical display returned, showing the Reaper dreadnought still pushing for the edge of the debris field. Fewer and fewer friendly blips remained to impede its path.

Through the arm of his chair, Shepard could feel an odd vibration. Before he could ask, warning lights appeared on EDI's console.

"Jeff, the damage to the starboard wing is being exacerbated by our speed and air resistance. We cannot maintain this velocity."

"Shit. If I back off, we won't make it into weapons range in time!"

"If we lose the wing, it will compromise far more than our pursuit."

"Slow us down," Shepard ordered. "EDI, try and open a channel to the Reaper."

"Commander?"

"Keep the ship in one piece, Joker, but get us in front of that ship. If that really is the Illusive Man, maybe I can buy us some more time."

"Shepard, I am receiving a reply."

The hologram console in the port corner of the bridge flickered to life. The Illusive Man appeared, his projection tinted orange instead of the customary blue. "Shepard. Coming to bid me farewell?"

The commander unbuckled himself from his chair, and moved to stand in front of the hologram. "You're not surprised to see me?"

"You have a talent for survival, even without my help. Are you going to try and stop me with one frigate against a Reaper? Or are you just trying to delay the inevitable?"

"I'm trying to understand you. You say you're fighting for humanity, but all you do is leave death and destruction in your wake. What are you trying to accomplish with all this?"

"Control. I've told you before, it's the only way to survive. We must master our environment; exploit every tool at our disposal. To do any less is asking to be destroyed."

Through the viewport, Shepard could see the enemy dreadnought in the distance. They were closing fast, but not fast enough. They still needed more time. "Power has to be earned. What you're doing will only cause more suffering. Do you think the galaxy will just bow down before you? That you can decide on your own what's best for everyone? No one, not even humanity, will accept that. We banded together to stop the Reapers, and you're trying to put yourself in their place!"

"It won't be quick. It won't be easy. There will be sacrifices. But this is the only way."

"You ignored me before when I tried to give you an alternative. You did it because you weren't yourself, because you'd been manipulated and blinded by the Reapers."

The Illusive Man shook his head. "What alternative is there?"

"Work together with us! Use what you've learned, what you know, to help us rebuild the galaxy. For everyone, instead of just yourself!"

His eyes narrowed. "You expect me to believe that can happen, with all that I've done? I thought you had more sense than that."

They were in range now. Joker's hand hovered over the weapon controls, but Shepard waved him off, not daring to move his eyes from the hologram. "You want to know how many people thought I was crazy for saving the rachni? For trying to cure the genophage? For trying to bring peace to the quarians and geth? The galaxy is more ready for cooperation than you give it credit for. And it's far more accepting of peace than it is tyranny."

"You don't know what I know, Shepard. You've accomplished what you thought was impossible, but you just don't understand the true meaning of the word. You haven't stared into the abyss. I've glimpsed the mysteries and the threats that could destroy us all."

"Then _tell us!_ No one grows stronger when we fight one another. If these threats are so huge, help us work together to face them."

"You don't know. You can't know. Even the Reapers tried that, and they failed. We saw the cycles from an organic perspective: the cruel calculus, the unfairness of our destruction. But there was more to it. I've discovered what's out there in the dark places between galaxies."

It finally clicked. "The Citadel Relay," Shepard whispered. "You found the other end. You know where the Reapers came from. That's what you were looking for on the ruins of the Presidium."

"The Reapers knew more than we imagined, Shepard. Billions of years' worth of accumulated knowledge. Even I can't comprehend it all. But I know their purpose wasn't as cruel as it seems. They were machines, after all. Cruelty has no benefit. No logic."

The _Normandy_ was now flying ahead of the Reaper, which had stopped firing on the few ships left harassing it as it exited the debris field. It was still taking shots from the coalition craft, but none of the ships packed enough punch to break through a dreadnought's kinetic barriers. In essence, all they were doing was hindering the Reaper's escape into FTL; if it were to accelerate to that speed and collide with one of the craft in its way, that impact _would_ be enough to cause severe damage.

"Then what was their purpose?" Shepard wondered, honestly curious at this point. "What were they trying to do?"

"There are no words for it. I'd tell you if I could, but it would be like explaining color to a blind man, or teaching quantum physics to an infant still in the womb. The Reapers had to write the truth into their own existence, and the only way to get organics to accept it was to assimilate them into Reapers themselves. It can only be seen to be believed, beyond the edge of the galaxy." He seemed honestly dismayed by his inability to express the problem. "That's where I have to go. Trust me, Shepard."

"Take us with you, then. Show us, and maybe we can help you."

"It won't work that way. It never has. I know that better than anyone." The Illusive Man no longer seemed smug or angry. The fatigue was plain on the ruined remnants of his face. "Even if we did go, what do you think would happen when we came back? We'd never be believed. They'd say I brainwashed you, or anyone else with us. How do you think Cerberus began? People will deny a hard truth before they face it. I'm the only one who can do this, Shepard. It's my burden to bear."

With resignation, Shepard realized the impasse. There were no words for the Illusive Man to explain what it was they faced from the depths of dark space. And just the same, there were no words at Shepard's disposal to sway a man who had forgotten how to trust.

"I can't just let you go. You know I can't."

"Then this is it. For what it's worth, knowing you has never failed to be… interesting. Goodbye, Commander Shepard." The hologram disappeared.

They watched on the rear displays as the Reaper's arms spread apart, like the fingers of a giant hand grasping out for them. Light began flickering from the dreadnought's large central eye. "Joker!"

The _Normandy_ swerved an instant before the red beam lanced out. The shields shimmered to life, sparks flying from consoles and conduits at the strain of even a glancing blow.

Joker grimaced as he put the ship through a wild series of evasive maneuvers. No shots followed the first, but it wouldn't do to sit still and tempt fate. "I've gotta say, I almost feel sorry for the guy. Let's put him out of his misery."

"The Reaper has been fully clear of the debris field for several minutes," EDI reported. "Your ploy was successful in delaying the Illusive Man, Shepard, but we now have very little margin for error."

Shepard was quiet for a moment, making a good show of scowling at the tactical display. The degree to which his conversation had actually been a ploy was not something he was prepared to discuss right now. "Bring us about," Shepard ordered. "And fire at will."

The _Normandy_ swung around, dancing from side to side, up and down, as she closed for an attack. A burst from the Thanix cannon slammed into the Reaper's kinetic barriers, but even the most powerful weapon in their arsenal was not enough to breach defenses of such power in a single shot. A volley of disruptor torpedoes flew out from the launchers under the frigate's wings just before Joker broke off to gain some distance.

"How many other ships are left?"

The AI consulted her scanners. "Two turian frigates, a quarian patrol ship, and one geth light cruiser."

"Not exactly an intimidating armada," Joker opined.

"Commander, analysis of sensors logs has revealed something that may be useful."

"What have you got, EDI?"

"I have correlated abnormal energy fluctuations with instances of the target attempting to fire, maneuver, or defend. There was also a significant decrease in activity during your conversation. The Illusive Man's control over the Reaper vessel is not as absolute as it might appear. Given its complexity, this is only natural."

"You're saying he has trouble operating multiple systems simultaneously?"

"That is correct."

"Joker, any ideas how to put that to use?"

"We're a little close to play chicken with a gun that powerful. Sorry, Commander, I'm fresh out of miracles on this one. The last time we tried to take down a ship this big on our own it didn't have shields."

That particular flaw in the Collectors' design philosophy had proven useful, both on Horizon and in the assault on their base. Unfortunately, Reaper dreadnoughts did not have any such weaknesses.

Joker threw the _Normandy_ into a dive, narrowly avoiding an attack from one of the secondary guns on the Reaper's tendrils. Shepard grabbed the chair next to the left of the pilot's seat as a renewed set of evasive maneuvers threatened to throw him off his feet. Through the frame, he could feel a nasty vibration building, strong enough to fill the ship with a constant rattle.

"Keep us in front of him, Joker!"

"Trying, sir. But getting us turned into component atoms won't make us much of a roadblock."

The orange flare of an explosion nearby reminded them of that reality. One of the turian frigates took a near miss, but even that was enough to melt thrusters and control surfaces badly enough to send it careening into the Reaper's kinetic barriers. Not all frigates had earned the same modifications the _Normandy_ had.

But even that level of sophistication might not be enough. The field of stars through the viewport spun as Joker took them through a barrel roll, but just as the frigate leveled off from the maneuver, the rattling vibrations turned into a violent shock and the audible screech of tearing metal. The ship lurched into an unstable corkscrew, spinning wildly. Enough red lights appeared across Joker and EDI's consoles that the rest of the bridge lighting was almost washed out.

The tumbling and shaking threw Shepard back into the nearby open chair. "Are we hit?"

"Negative. The primary support frame for the starboard wing has been severed. The structure is currently aligned fifty degrees off true."

"Cutting starboard engines!" Joker barked. The dizzying counterclockwise spin slowed, then stopped, but the imbalance in thrust now had them moving through a gradual starboard turn.

"How bad is it?"

Joker's expression was grim. "Commander, I've already realigned the port engines as far as they'll go. There's not enough power in the thrusters to compensate. We can't maneuver."

"Can you get us out of here?"

"Not quickly." The pilot's face went from grim to outright pained. "I might be able to keep us in one piece long enough to abandon ship."

Their starboard drift was now bringing the Reaper dreadnought back into view. The vessel loomed larger and larger in the viewports. Its arms yawned wide, tendrils of red energy coalescing between them. There was no time. Not to order an evasion, not to give the crew a chance to escape. Not even to wonder how long—

There was a flash from behind them. A streak of light, seen only as an afterimage, slammed into the Reaper just as it was preparing to fire. The area around the main gun exploded spectacularly. The whole body of the Reaper twisted with the force of the impact, rearing back like a wounded animal. The tendrils recoiled, like arms withdrawn to ward off a blow.

A second flash struck the Reaper, then a third and a fourth. The dreadnought's barriers flickered in protest, distorting light just above the ship's hull. Two more shots detonated against the curve of the upper crest, with the second tearing off a third of the ship's top spire in a gout of orange flame. The ship tried to turn away, but a second volley slammed home, and once the blasts had dissipated into the vacuum, they could see the arms from the port side drifting off into space. The Reaper seemed to collapse in on itself, shrinking piece by piece as the bombardment chiseled it down.

Their drift had them pointed directly at their foe. Who or whatever had delivered them to this point had seen fit to offer them yet another opportunity. Shepard pointed out the window, as if there could have been any doubt to his thoughts. "Fire."

A spear of azure light erupted from beneath the _Normandy_'s bow. It drilled into the Reaper just left of center, exploding out the back as it sliced through the dreadnought's hull. A firestorm of secondary detonations ripped the vessel clean in half, and another withering volley turned those fragments smaller still.

Silence reigned on the bridge. They looked on as flames licked out from the wreckage like tongues, feeding on pockets of atmosphere. The rest of the ship was already cooling into abstract clumps of slag. Some moments later, their stately starboard turn brought them around to their saviors. A hundred ships of all sizes and shapes stood there. Winged cruisers of turian and Alliance design. Snub-nosed geth destroyers. The rounded prows of quarian ships-of-the-line.

To Shepard's left, a hologram crackled to life. A many in Navy blues with a thin grey beard smiled at them. "Sorry we're late, Commander," Admiral Hackett said. "But thanks for saving some for the rest of us."

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***A/N* -** Thanks so much to all my reviewers: CP1064, Mr. Eclipse, Sergeant Conley, badkidoh, Shiso no Kitsune, Mattmaster112, blackwind2254, and Raistlin99


	11. Epilogue: A Voice From the Darkness

**Epilogue**

**A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS**

"Say what you want about the geth, but they do build a mighty impressive space station."

Commander John Shepard stood in front of the wide viewport. The smile he saw in his own reflection was almost content. "Sure. Once you convince them to add windows."

"Patience, Commander. Before you know it, they'll be painting landscapes and composing bad poetry just like all the rest of us."

"Joker, between comments like that one and the fact that you managed to sit through this whole thing without threatening to come back in the _Normandy_ and blow us all to pieces, I'm convinced I'll make a diplomat of you yet."

The pilot shifted uncomfortably in his dress blue uniform. His shoulders twitched as he leaned on the railing in front of the rounded pane of thermoplastic that ringed the bridge of the SSV _Orizaba_. "Not if I have to dress like this again, you won't. Three hours in this thing is three too many. And I miss my hat."

"If you think this little get together was bad, wait until that place opens for real," Shepard warned. He held up his champagne glass to point out the viewport at the object of their observation, which was taking shape in the dim distance.

Little more than a skeletal frame at this point, just three months from the anchoring of the first beams in Earth's L2 Lagrange point, Phoenix Station was still coming together faster than any project of its scope had right to. A few thousand sentient machines that didn't require food or rest had that kind of effect on construction timetables. The station was going to be as grand as they could make it, which was only fitting for the provisional home of the new Citadel Council.

"I still can't believe we're already building it," Joker said, sounding impressed in spite of himself. "I figured the new councilors would take six months just to decide which four hundred colors for the bathroom towels should be declared semifinalists."

"Now, now. Remember who you're talking to."

"Sorry, sir. Wouldn't want to get on the new human councilor's bad side."

"Neither would he," a new voice agreed. "He knows better."

Joker looked over his shoulder. "Madam Councilor," he said, not missing a beat as he raised his glass in salute.

"Madam Councilor," Shepard added, parroting the gesture with a smirk.

"What happened to 'mom'?" Councilor Hannah Shepard wondered, with dismay that was not entirely feigned.

"Don't act so shocked. You're the one who had me studying protocol handbooks for alien cultures before I was even in high school."

"Someone had to reign you in. I seem to recall a curious young man who spent a week memorizing the turian citizenship structure when he should have been studying for his European history test."

Joker shivered. "Commander, you were an even more boring kid than I feared."

"If only you knew," Hannah said, with a dazzling smile and a twinkle in her slate-grey eyes. She was a formidable woman, lithe but nearly six feet tall. Her auburn hair, just hinting at grey along the temples, was cut short and combed back from an expressive face.

"Is this where you threaten to distribute my baby pictures?"

"No to subordinates, dear. They'll have to settle for embarrassing stories."

"Terrific."

"Of course, if you think _that's_ my revenge for the little stunt you pulled with Hackett and Tevos, you're sorely mistaken." How her smile could go from teasing to sinister without her face ever appearing to move astounded Shepard. That same face had by turns terrified, mystified and mollified cadets, diplomats, junior officers, civilians, superiors, and especially her own kin for more than fifty years.

"If I told you that the only reason I did it was to see the expression on Sparatus' face when I made the suggestion, would that make it better or worse?"

"You've put me in a room alone with those people for four hours a day, not to mention all the glad-handing circuses like this I find myself invited to. There is nothing that can make it worse."

"I figured they'd have given you the farm by now," Shepard replied. He took a sip of his drink to hide the true size of his smile. "You must be losing your touch."

"Oh, they've already named me consul for life. I just don't want to upset everyone with the announcement before the laurel wreath is ready."

"And you didn't even need to bring an army over the Rubicon."

She laughed heartily; the laugh of a soldier. "I suppose you remembered your history after all."

With galactic society still in shambles, the reformation of the Citadel Council had been a tricky piece of business. With no practical interstellar travel or methods of communication, and only theories on the means of their reestablishment, the entire process was mostly symbolic. As such, it had been decided that stability and familiarity were the best tools at their disposal. To keep the billions of scattered survivors calm and in any way united, continuity was key. Direct authority would be nominal at best, but the majority of the galaxy had lived under the auspices of the Council for millennia. When they did reestablish contact, whether that was years or decades or even centuries from now, it would be done as a return to normalcy.

That was the hope, at least. Naturally there would be some differences, and not even the people present knew what shape it would eventually take. The most significant decision ("only decision," Joker would insist) they had agreed on would be to establish the new galactic capital in the Sol system. Valern and Osoba were missing and presumed lost in the fall of the Citadel, so the presence of the only two survivors of the previous Council and the vast majority of the galaxy's military strength had already left the Local Cluster as the de facto seat of government. It made for a logical starting point, even if there was room for debate on whether it would serve as the long-term seat of galactic power.

As for other matters, Tevos and Sparatus were pushing hard for the status quo, for reasons as cultural as they were political. Their newest counterparts – Hannah Shepard, Alliance Admiral (retired), and an STG officer by the name of Padok Wiks, who was serving on an interim basis as the highest-ranking salarian to have accompanied the fleet – were pushing just as hard for reform for the exact same reasons. The humans had little legacy with the Council to preserve, and the short-lived salarians were as adaptable as they were transitory.

Before Hannah could gather a good head of steam in regaling Joker with tales of her son's wayward childhood, two new faces joined their conversation.

"Councilor Shepard. It's good to see you again."

"Likewise. Though I do believe I asked you to call me Hannah, Admiral Zorah."

"To which she will reply that you should call her Tali," EDI interjected. "The organic insistence on formal address in spite of requests for familiarity is a habit of inconsistent nuances which continue to baffle me."

"Young lady, the first thing you must learn is to always preserve your right to be inconsistent," Hannah advised. She had shown a remarkable level of acceptance to the AI's presence in her son's cadre of friends and crew. She had been enamored by EDI's open curiosity, and had taken her under her wing, often referring to her as "young lady." They had a mutual respect and candor, but Shepard privately guessed that his mother had also hit on the perfect secondhand source for tales he would have rather left untold. After all, he had seen a noticeable drop in his mother's hectoring over his lack of communication for the past year and a half.

"I'm sure that policy keeps the Council meetings entertaining," Shepard said dryly.

"Oh, they're never what could be called dull," Hannah admitted. "Discussions are always lively… especially when you show up."

He frowned. "It's my duty as a Spectre to find trouble and get it under control. Since we're not in a position for me to negotiate with an assault rifle anymore, that means reporting trouble to the Council."

"Well, you did retire me from one position as your superior officer just to get me appointed to another," she pointed out. "You can hardly expect me not to give you a hard time when you come in with another pet project."

"I hardly think associate Council membership for quarians, geth, and the krogan qualifies as a 'pet project.' Unless you'd rather I stop talking Wrex out of going to your meetings?"

"Some head-butting might prove useful from time to time. And I never said I disagreed with you. All the same, you caused quite a stir with your little speech the other day."

"He tends to do that," said Tali.

"Yes. Quite often where you're concerned, or so I hear," Hannah said slyly, giving her son a pointed look.

Shepard took a liberal drink of champagne, and resolved to speak to EDI as soon as possible.

Almost four months had passed since the liberation of Earth, and there had been no lack of things to do in that time. There was the ongoing reconstruction effort, the formation of settlements for the other races on Earth, Mars, and dozens of the system's largest moons, and the reestablishment of civil order. All around him he was watching wounds heal, and while his own burns, cuts, and broken bones from the Battle of Earth and the defeat of the Illusive Man had mended, some scars remained. The ache in his chest as he woke up alone, day after day, was one such.

His mother's veiled hints were not helping. Neither were his memories of a conversation in _Normandy_'s engineering bay just before the assault on the Collector base, with Tali. He had never spoken of that to anyone, out of respect for her, but in the privacy of his own mind he still admitted that he had not rejected her for any lack of feelings on his part, whatever he may have said. He had hurt her with that lie, but he would have hurt her more by teasing her hopes when he was still deeply in love with Liara.

So many people were trying to find normalcy wherever they could, but he was still too busy giving it to them to try and find any of his own. Heavy industry and manufacturing were just now getting back on their feet, and the _Normandy_'s berth in the new Deimos dockyards had been the very first in a facility able to repair anything larger than a fighter. Four months on, and they were still struggling to reliably feed the eight billion residents of the system, and a significant minority were dependent on the two combat-refitted quarian liveships that had accompanied the liberation fleet. Shepard didn't want to contemplate what would have transpired without that particular bit of blind luck.

The present had enough challenges without thinking about the future. His mother had actually been a compromise on humanity's Council seat, which had very nearly been _his_. Beyond that, he had been offered a seat on the reformed Alliance parliament (quietly), the candidacy for too many elected offices to count (not so quietly), and even a promotion to full Admiral (from Hackett, jokingly, or so he hoped). And that was only the tip of the political iceberg. Tensions between the different factions in the coalition were worsening every day. If it wasn't agitated krogan, it was a band of mercenaries, or a restless crew from a ship of any race that was rightfully homesick. It was too easy to forget that families were still separated, often with uncertain fates, and the reality of that was starting to fester.

Keeping the peace was starting to make winning the war look like the easy part. The "groundbreaking" ceremony they were currently attending was a reminder of that. Ostensibly a commemoration of the beginning of Phoenix Station's construction, it was better described as an open Council session with the addition of champagne. Matters were still far too unsettled for anyone to be comfortable with a real celebration, so most of what they had discussed had been business.

"Commander, my glass is empty, and my pride only lets me ask EDI for a refill so many times," Joker said. "If it's all the same to you, we'll head back to the ship."

"The _Normandy_'s not going anywhere, Joker. We're not scheduled to run trials until next week."

"Yeah, and if I'm not there to watch 'em, one of the dockworkers is liable to think they can get away with spot-welding the starboard wing back in place. I don't want my girl getting anything less than the best before we try flying again."

"I have been monitoring repairs throughout the process, Jeff," EDI assured him. "Even now I am performing shear analysis and on the structural refit, as well as coordinating with the foreman and the geth performing the actual exterior work. Their diligence and attention to detail are more than satisfactory."

"Talking with other men behind my back, even when she's standing in front of me. What's a guy to do?"

"Jeff, I assure you that if I were to be in any way unfaithful to our relationship, I would never be so crass as to reveal it in this manner."

Joker, Shepard, and Tali stared blankly.

"That was a joke," said Hannah.

"Ma'am, you are a very bad influence."

"Why thank you Mr. Moreau."

"Leaving now. C'mon, EDI, let's hope we come across a full tray of drinks on the way back to the shuttle." The two left, arm in arm, with Joker sticking close enough to the railing as it wound its way towards the elevator that his limp was barely noticeable.

"I never would have said it without seeing them for myself, but they make a cute couple."

"Part of me still isn't sure what to make of it at times," Shepard admitted, "but they are good together."

"Indeed they are," his mother agreed, with another significant glance.

Shepard resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The woman had always been relentless.

"Commander. You didn't just send Joker to bed early, did you?"

Shepard burst into a smile, reaching out to shake the hand offered by the new arrival. "Kaidan! I didn't see you during the meeting."

"I just got here from Harvest Command, actually," Alenko replied. "Had to change. Sorry I missed all the fun."

"Major, I don't know how you can say that and sound like you actually mean it. You'll have to tell me how you do that."

"Hello, ma'am. My secret is to work with your son and agree with all of his plans. Once I mastered that, every other lie is easy to pull off by comparison."

"You haven't even been under my command for months, Alenko," Shepard said wryly. "And before then you outranked me."

"Yes, sir. I agree completely. Who am I to argue with that?" Kaidan said, with a wink at Hannah.

"I'm feeling a little outnumbered here. Tali?"

"No comment."

He blinked. "What?"

"I followed you on _three_ suicide missions, Shepard, including one we outright called that. Where you're concerned, I'm pretty sure offering a contrary opinion at this point would get me slapped in a straightjacket."

"That explains so many things," Hannah said coyly, eyes twinkling over the rim of her glass.

Shepard hung his head, holding up his hands. "I surrender. No more."

"You don't get away that easy," his mother warned playfully. "But I suppose I can allow myself to be distracted. What held you planetside, Major?"

"I'm actually glad I found you, Councilor," Alenko admitted. "Dr. Valus was putting together a final report on the artifact studies. I have a copy for you."

Hannah's eyes narrowed the barest fraction, which shifted her face from teasing to businesslike in less than a heartbeat. "Conclusions?"

"If Reaper artifacts are still capable of indoctrination, we have no way to detect or prevent it. Short of deliberate long-term exposure, we have no further avenues of research."

"I can't speak for the other councilors, but I'd say that's good news. It's past time we stopped fretting about those things and started acting. Whether we put them to use or get rid of them, we need to move on."

"I'd tend to agree, ma'am. But—"

"No buts, Major," she interrupted firmly. "Either the Reapers are gone and we have nothing to worry about, or they're not and we have bigger problems. Either way, we'll never truly defeat them until we stop fearing them."

"Yes, Councilor."

Shepard wanted to agree with her. In large part, he did agree with her. Since the Illusive Man's defeat, Reaper technology had shown no further signs of activity, and if they were going to restore the galactic community, the sooner they could devote themselves to studying and reverse-engineering Reaper technology the better. But for some reason, whether it was paranoia or nerves or just hard-wired suspicion, the thought of doing so made him uneasy. He had no rational explanation for it. Only a feeling in his gut, and he knew how well the Council – even the current Council – responded to gut feelings. They had made that abundantly clear already, and he knew better than to bring the topic up again in present company.

"Kaidan, I'd like you to forward a copy of that report to me when you get a chance."

His fellow Spectre nodded. "Will do, Commander."

"I'd better get back to the _Normandy_ before Joker tries to take her out for a spin. He's been champing at the bit ever since the geth mentioned upgrades to the drive core."

"Mind if I hitch a ride back with you, Shepard?" Tali asked. "I really should get an update on the repairs."

"Oh just go, the both of you. Shoo," Hannah waved them on. "Kaidan, come with me. I want to bend Padok's ear about your report before the others can get at him…" She had already grabbed the major by the arm, and the biotic was proving all too biddable as she led him off into the press of mingling officers filling the rest of the bridge.

Shepard and Tali walked to the _Orizaba_'s hangar bay in silence. He tried not to let his unease show, and the quiet was companionable enough. The few crew members they passed made way for the two, offering salutes which were returned with absent efficiency. They boarded a free shuttle and took off promptly. The shuttle headed away from the construction zone and its prowling sentries, accelerating towards the distant red speck that was Mars. Shepard barely noticed when Tali ducked her head into the cockpit, until she reemerged and sealed the door behind her. He gave her a quizzical look.

"What's wrong, Shepard?"

He said nothing, merely looked towards the cabin door and raised a meaningful eyebrow.

"I asked the pilot to take her time. But that's not what I'm talking about. You're worried about something, I can tell."

He sighed. So much for putting on a good front. "It's nothing."

"You don't worry about 'nothing.' Trust me, I've seen you worry about enough things over the past few years to notice the difference."

"I wish I knew. There's just something that sets me on edge whenever we start talking about putting Reaper technology to use."

"We don't have much choice. We're centuries away from designing and building FTL drives with the speed and range for intragalactic travel without it."

"I know. And believe me, I want us to put the galaxy back together as quickly as we can."

"I believe you," she said calmly. She looked at him for several seconds. "Is it about what the Illusive Man said?"

She hadn't been there for the conversation. In fact, she'd spent most of the next month recovering from the wounds and subsequent infections she'd taken in their return to the Presidium. But she'd seen the recordings enough times to know what had been said almost as well as he did. "I don't know. Maybe we spent so long fighting the Reapers, trying to destroy them, that I'm just stuck in that mindset. But every time I think of us using that technology… of trying to control them, like he did…"

"Whatever power that madman had is gone now. We've been over every square centimeter of what's left of the Citadel, more than once in most cases. Whatever he was using to reactivate and control their technology died with him. We're not repeating his mistakes."

Rationally, he knew that. Logically, he agreed with that. They had devoted weeks of time, huge amounts of expertise, and the hundreds of thousands of man hours of hands-on effort to search every fragment of the Citadel. From the wreckage of the Wards to the twice-charred husk of the Presidium, they had found nothing. No way for them to reactivate the technology there, and even less indication that they would be able to glean the secrets the Illusive Man believed he had discovered even if they could have done so. Whatever mysteries the Cerberus leader had uncovered died with him.

"I know. But I can't help wondering if he might not have found something important. Even if it wasn't what he believed it to be, maybe there was something useful. In the end, the Citadel was the most advanced piece of technology in the galaxy. What it was built for, what it could do… it was the only one of its kind."

"Maybe that's for the best. We knew the truth about it, but with the Reapers gone there were only two things that could happen. Either we'd always remember what it was, drowning out what it had stood for in the first place, or we'd forget what it had been. I don't know which would be worse. What was the Earth myth you told us about, after Ilos?"

"The Trojan Horse."

"Right. Imagine if the people had kept it around after their city was destroyed. It would remind every person who looked at it of the tragedy, or they'd forget what had happened and it would lose all meaning. Your mother had a point: we need to stop being afraid of the Reapers. But we can never forget what they did for billions of years. What they almost did to us."

A soft knock came through the cockpit door, followed by the pilot's voice over the intercom. "We're one minute out from Deimos, ma'am."

Tali released the door controls, and the portal hissed open. "All right. Take us to berth one."

"Aye, aye."

The slowly expanding ring of drydocks in high orbit over Mars was already visible, tinged red by the light of the planet below. Despite their name, the facilities orbited the planet and not the smaller of its two moons, through at roughly the same altitude and relative velocity. Eventually they would become the main shipyard and repair facility for the system, with easy access to Earth and Phoenix Station, but far enough out of the way to remove the risks and hazards of a major naval construction and maintenance facility from proximity to large population centers. At the moment, it was little more than a half-dozen frigate-sized berths, a few more for cruisers, a small pressurized central ring, and a great deal of room for expansion.

One slot was occupied by a very familiar ship, almost whole again after the near-catastrophic encounter with a reactivated Reaper dreadnought. Of course, most of the damage had been entirely self-inflicted by the ship's pilot, but no one mentioned that. Either they understood the urgency that had led to the maneuver, or they were too impressed to say anything against it. Anyone else was just too scared that Joker might put them through a test run without a warning to buckle their safety harness.

They came in for a landing in the frigate's hangar bay, and the two passengers disembarked to allow the shuttle to return to her station on the Alliance flagship. It was rather late in the ship's night by now, and the hangar was deserted.

They made their way to the elevator and walked inside. The doors closed behind them. Shepard reached out for the button to send them to the crew deck, but stopped. Maybe he was tired. Maybe it was two glasses of champagne going to his head. Maybe it was his mother's voice echoing in his ears. Or maybe he was just thinking about too many things at once. He pulled his hand back. "Do you ever wonder…" he began, then hesitated.

"What is it?"

"I'm going to ask you a question that only you can answer, Tali. At the same time, it's something I know I have no right to ask."

She put a hand on his shoulder, turning him to face her. She tilted her head ever so slightly to the side, but said nothing.

He swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. "Do you ever think about what happened? After Liara and Garrus made it to the Citadel?"

She looked away, the lights in her eyes dimming.

He winced. It had to be said that he was not entirely an idiot, and he thought he knew at once what had just happened. "Tali… I know that wasn't the question—"

"Yes," she cut him off, voice soft and choked. "Every day."

That response made him feel even more guilty, which he hadn't thought possible. "I'm sorry."

"Do you?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "Too often. Maybe that's what has me so twisted about the Citadel. It's not the Reapers, or the Illusive Man, or anything else. It's the… not knowing."

"I've imagined a thousand ways that things might have happened up there. So many possibilities, from terrible to fantastic and everything in between. The uncertainty kills me. But you know what's worse? The guilt."

"Because we weren't there?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "We did everything we could to get there. I know that. It's the guilt about everyone else. I worry about two people, but I can't seem to care about anyone else."

As similar as their circumstances were, they had each taken something very different from the tragedy that had struck them both.

Shepard carried the guilt of not being there for his friends, for failing in what he had believed to be his sole personal duty in a three year quest. He had failed in his responsibilities as a commander, watching friends and subordinates die in his place because he had been unable to reach the objective.

Tali was the product of a society that was simultaneously insulated and generous. A culture where everything was shared, and the collective good was held so far above personal wants that the very indication of adulthood was for an individual to give away the most precious thing they could find. She felt guilty for being so jealous, so greedy, as to worry about the fate of a few, even one, before all the rest who had suffered.

"There were fifteen million people on the Citadel," Tali whispered. Her breathing came in unsteady sobs. "Probably more, with all the refugees. Almost as many people as my entire _species_. They died when the Reapers took it, and I don't care. What does that say about me?"

"We don't know that," he said, trying to comfort her.

"But we do!" she cried. "Don't you see? We've been there now, been over every cursed piece of that damned place. And you know what we found? _Nothing!_ Not one body, not one scrap of genetic material. We don't even have a way to know who was lost. We're the only ones who get even that much, and it kills me."

Shepard froze. He had been so obsessed with the tangible, the gears and crude things of plots and power. He'd been blind. Why hadn't he seen it before? Why had they never wondered?

He punched the elevator's controls with enough force to crack the console.

Tali looked at him, sorrow lost in sudden alarm at the wild expression on his face. "Shepard? What is it?"

"The beam!" he growled as the elevator began moving up with agonizing slowness. "Why didn't we ever wonder about that?"

"What?"

"The Conduit! Why the hell would the Reapers leave a link open to the Citadel in the middle of our attack? They knew what we planned. The Illusive Man warned them. But they left it open."

"They didn't care. They never thought we'd make it. _Keelah_, we barely did!"

"No. That's not it. Even if it was, what happened to everyone they sent up from Earth? To the fifteen million people there when the Reapers took it back?" No elevator ride in his life had even seemed as interminable as this one.

"They're gone, Shepard," Tali replied, a pleading note in her voice.

So even she didn't believe it. Hell, he didn't quite believe it himself. Not yet, not without proof. "Without a trace? We've been over every inch of the wreckage and haven't found a thing. Not even the Reapers are that thorough." The doors to the elevator hissed open. Shepard squeezed between them as soon as they were wide enough to pass through, and bolted to his left. "The Conduit didn't go to the Citadel, Tali," he shouted over his shoulder. "It went through the Citadel Relay!"

If they were too late… if he had put the pieces together only to discover the worst, he would never forgive himself.

The doors to Liara's quarters opened at his touch. The lights flickered on, banks of monitors awakening to the presence of the man who had declared himself, however unwillingly and ineffectually, the new Shadow Broker. With the _Normandy _in drydock, he'd barely set foot in the room since. Activating along with the lights was the familiar white sphere of Glyph.

"Welcome back, Comm—"

"Why did you give me control of the Shadow Broker assets?"

The drone bobbed up and down. "You indicated Dr. T'Soni would not be returning."

Not even in the depths of a vacuum had he ever felt so cold. "Glyph, how long has it been since you lost contact with Liara's transponder?"

"Commander?"

"_How long?_"

"I'm afraid I don't understand your question," the VI confessed. "Dr. T'Soni's transponder is still online."


	12. Preview: Beyond Chapter One

*** A/N *** - This chapter has been posted as the first in a new story, "Beyond." I've added it here as a teaser/preview, and also so that anyone who was being alerted to updates will know that the sequel has (finally) begun.

Thanks to some good observations by reviewers, I've also made small tweaks to the end of the epilogue for clarity.

* * *

**The Archangel I**

**CONDUIT**

Garrus Vakarian pushed himself to his feet. His body felt like it had just been used as a railgun slug, but pain meant he was still alive, at least. That, or he would be having words with the designer of the afterlife. His eyes were adjusting slowly from the blinding brightness of the Conduit to the near-darkness of the Citadel. "Well, this isn't quite what I expected."

"What were you expecting?" a voice asked from his right. A ray of light lanced out as Liara T'Soni activated her omnitool.

Garrus looked away from the renewed glare. "To be dead, mostly."

She was silent for an uncomfortable moment. "It doesn't look like anyone else made it up behind us."

"Comm's awful quiet, too." He reached up to key on his mic. "This is Garrus. Liara and I have reached the Citadel. Anyone up here with us, report in."

Only silence replied. Not even the faintest crackle of static came back while he waited to the count of three. "This is Vakarian to Hammer, all teams check in." Still nothing. He switched frequencies. "Hammer to Sword. Any unit on this channel, acknowledge."

With rapidly dwindling hope, Liara tried her own comm unit, but met with no more success.

"So. Two of us against whatever the Reapers have stashed in the Citadel." Garrus chuckled. "I like these odds."

Her head turned towards him, the backlight shrouding her face in a halo of blue shadow. She didn't say a word.

"Liara… Look, I'm sure he—"

"Don't," she cut him off sharply. "We've got a job to do."

Garrus' mandibles twitched in a turian approximation of a grimace. He should have known better than to joke here, now. At least with her.

Keeping his rifle out, Garrus switched on the barrel light. He swept the beam about slowly, trying to get a sense of their surroundings. They had arrived at a place he didn't recognize, which was not much of a surprise, even to a veteran C-Sec officer. They were in the middle of a wide and empty platform, the same faintly reflective grey as most other surfaces in the Citadel. They were too far from the edges to see over, but there appeared to be a shallow ramp on one side. They began walking towards it, and what little sound their footsteps made seemed to vanish into the emptiness around them.

The Citadel was eerily dark. The arms were still closed, judging by the uniform but almost imperceptible glow from the structures lining the inner surface. Beyond the dimness, there was something about the sight that made him vaguely uneasy. Considering they were two beings alone, stranded in the middle of a gigantic station built and now reclaimed by the Reapers, that level of discomfort hardly even registered.

As they neared the ramp, the station's natural curvature brought some of their surroundings into view. The ramp led down to a wide walkway, which extended in opposite directions as far as they could see. Their lights revealed a second ramp directly across the path, which led up to another platform identical to the one they were standing on. As they moved down the gentle slope, looking in either direction revealed more ramps in the distance, leading down instead of up. Even those features were at the barest edge of their sight, but the path itself seemed to go on, as straight and long as eternity.

"It looks like the keepers have been busy." There was something about the scale and symmetry of the whole arrangement that made his plates twitch.

"This path seems to run lengthwise along the interior of the arms, somewhere above the wards," Liara observed. "We need to move towards the Presidium, and hope the Citadel Tower and master control panel are still accessible. We can re-open the Citadel from there."

"I don't know about you, but I'm having trouble getting my bearings."

"The arrangement of the lights is… unfamiliar," Liara agreed, a note of apprehension creeping into her voice as she looked above, trying to judge their location. From any of the wards, the warm orange glow of the adjacent arms was a constant spectacle. Their ordered tracks of streets and structures formed constellations as familiar to a Citadel resident as the stars of any terrestrial homeworld. But there was nothing recognizable in the long, stark rows of light above their heads now, and nothing warm about their hue of faint, cold blue.

"I know the keepers are hard-working little bastards, but something's not right here."

"We don't have time to wonder about the industry of the keepers. Or the Reaper's sense of aesthetics, for that matter. There, that way; it's faint, but that looks like the Presidium ring." Without another word, she started moving.

"Liara, wait," Garrus said, grabbing her by the elbow as she reached the foot of the ramp. "This station is almost fifty kilometers long. We could be walking for hours."

She ripped her arm from his grasp, glaring at him as though the laws of space and time were inconveniences he had personally established to block her path. "Then we had better start moving. Or do you have a better idea?"

"Look around, get our bearings. Try and find a working elevator or transport. An abandoned taxi, maybe."

She spun away, simmering with frustration. "Yes, I'm sure that after having been deposited in the middle of a rearranged Citadel, we'll conveniently come across a _taxi_ to deliver us straight to where we need to go."

"Let's face it, stranger things have happened. Hell, maybe we'll stumble across a big red button labeled 'press here to kill Reapers.'"

"Nothing would make me happier. But we're not going to find anything standing here, are we?"

"True enough, but one step at a time. Let's see where one of those down ramps leads." The utter silence of everything beyond their footsteps was disturbing. Garrus fought back the urge to keep looking over his shoulders. He settled for shifting the reassuring weight of the rifle in his hands, but couldn't push away the feeling that he was being watched. If he hadn't already spent years of his life living on the Citadel, he might have worried that he was experiencing the first signs of indoctrination inside what they could no longer forget was a Reaper construct. _Right, Garrus. Way to think positive._

Somewhere amidst all the tunnels and alien ships and labyrinthine complexes, he had once asked Shepard how he always found his way around. He had not expected the answer "when in doubt, go left." Even now he wasn't sure whether or not the Commander had been serious, but the habit seemed to have stuck. He and Liara both turned to head down the left ramp when the path branched off. They weren't more than halfway down before their lights began to reveal vague shapes in front of them. They weren't much farther than that when they stopped to share a look of mutual disquiet.

The ramp split apart below them, forming a new path parallel to the walkway above. This edge was bordered by a railing, tightly packed with control panels, the same ubiquitous kind that the keepers manned throughout the Citadel. These were dark and inactive, with no sign of keepers themselves. Behind every terminal was a translucent cylinder, made of a glassy material that seemed oddly ethereal, lit from behind by the faint blue glow of the wards.

And within each of those cylinders, framed by that halo of soft light, was a human.

"By the goddess…" Liara breathed.

"I guess now we know what they were using the Conduit for."

The cylinders seemed like smoother, more refined versions of the rough, insectoid pods that had held human colonists and the captured _Normandy_ crew back on the Collector base. Garrus resisted the urge to reach out and touch them. Memories of flesh blackening and melting flashed before his eyes, accompanied by the screams of men and women as they were broken down to feed the growth of the human Reaper. It was no small relief seeing that these pods were all independent, with no wires or tubes to be found. In fact, he could find no structure supporting them of any kind; each cylinder was floating, perfectly still, in mid-air. As he leaned over the rail for a better look, the near-inaudible hum of a low-power mass effect field provided an answer to that question, but a single look down brought him up short, and not from vertigo.

"There's more below. Look!"

They stood in front of the uppermost row of cylinders, but the pods were stacked one on top of another, extending downwards beyond the range of their handheld lights. A more thorough look around revealed additional ramps leading down, tiers upon tiers of central pathways branching down into sidewalks that provided access to the pods and their control panels. It wasn't an unreasonable leap of logic to assume the opposite side was configured just like this one.

"Just how high above the base of the wards are we, do you think?" asked Garrus, a sickening feeling gathering in the pit of his stomach.

"There could be dozens of levels," Liara said, shining her light into one of the cylinders to examine the occupant. As best they could tell, the humans were unconscious but alive. "Even hundreds."

Garrus aimed his rifle between the two nearest cylinders, illuminating more faint shapes in the distance. "I can see more stasis pods. It looks like another set of platforms and walkways, maybe ten meters between this row and that one."

"You were right, Garrus. The keepers have been busy."

"If we see one, remind me to congratulate it… after I shoot it. What do you want to bet that every ward has been reconfigured just like this? They could fit the whole population of Earth in here."

The asari's eyes narrowed, and she began speaking quietly to herself. "Three meters tall, one meter wide, half-meter space on each side. Forty-five kilometers in length… thirty thousand pods per row." She glanced over her shoulder, shining her omnitool towards the containers on the opposite walkway. "Sections twenty meters across, ten meters between… interior circumference forty kilometers…"

Garrus was too curious – and perhaps a little impressed – to make any of the quips that came to mind and distract her, so he just listened as she continued rattling off numbers under her breath. When she finally stopped whispering, she blinked once, twice, and finally looked at him.

"Not just Earth. It's a rough guess with a fair bit of rounding, but there could be forty _billion_ of these pods. With room to spare."

"I'd check your math, but with just six fingers and six toes we'd be here a while."

"Very funny."

Garrus slung his weapon into the crook of his elbow. Cradling his chin, with his free hand, he began walking down the row, lost in thought. "What are the Reapers going to do with forty billion stasis pods? Palaven, Thessia, Earth: all reports we've gotten indicate they reprocess most organics on the planets where they find them. They could move the Citadel around to collect stragglers and small colonies, maybe, but that seems… inefficient. And it's not storage, because they always leave the Citadel for the next cycle to discover."

Liara followed a few steps behind him. "We may never know. And it won't matter at all if we don't get the arms open and let the Crucible dock."

The turian smiled. "Now this is strange. Here I am pondering mysteries of the universe while you remind me of the objective. It's been a long time since Ilos, hasn't it?"

They quickened their pace, staying on the path next to the stasis pods. The whole structure seemed to lead them towards the Presidium ring in the distance, and showed no signs of deviating. Garrus studied the faces as they passed in a blur, if only to relieve the uniformity of the other scenery.

"I was so foolish then," Liara said wistfully. "We've come across more landmark discoveries in three years than entire generations of archaeologists make. I could have spent a lifetime on each of them."

"But then you'd never have found the next one."

"Precisely."

"I was wrong about you back then, you know," Garrus offered.

"What do you mean?"

"When we were first working together, against Saren, I didn't know quite what to make of you. That VI we came across on Ilos, what was its name…? I'd have put a year's salary down that you'd tell us to leave you behind."

She smiled. "It was… a thought that crossed my mind. I suppose I did get more than a bit off-track, begging to stay and speak with Vigil even as Saren invaded the Citadel… But I kept going."

"That you did."

"And we'll do the same thing here, won't we?" she asked, her voice one part hope, another part resignation.

"That we will."

She actually laughed a little. "You're not much for speeches, are you?"

"Tried it out on Omega. Never did find the knack for it, especially considering what I had to live up…" his voice trailed off, bringing Liara to a stop beside him.

"Garrus?"

He pointed at the nearest stasis pod. "Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

Liara gasped. In the nearest pod was a humanoid shape, but the body was definitely not human. The outline of a wide, sloped skull stared back at them. "That's a Prothean!"

The contents of the pods had abruptly changed. They found another Prothean in the next cylinder, and another, and yet more down the line. "Javik's going to be in shock when he hears about this. I think I'll have EDI take vids."

Liara knelt next to the nearest console. "This doesn't make sense." She brought her omnitool to bear, and began trying to link up with the keeper interface. "How could the Reapers have hidden a cache of Protheans on the Citadel for so long?"

"Maybe they stumbled across another sleeper cell, like Eden Prime." He floundered about for another explanation, but found his mind going blank. None of them had known what to expect when they had started their desperate charge towards the transport beam in London, but the reality was fast becoming surreal. More than anything, it was making him long for something to shoot at.

Liara gave a cry of delight as the console she was poking at flickered to life. "Now, let's see. Maybe I can access some kind of log…"

No more than a few seconds had gone by when an electric crack erupted behind them. Liara nearly fell off the path in shock, and nervous energy had Garrus turned with his weapon at the ready before the sound had even faded. He was a bit nonplussed to find a keeper scuttling towards them, the edges of the walkway around it sparking with a blue light that looked oddly familiar.

"Where the hell did it come from?" he demanded, even as the mottled green being strode brazenly between them. It moved as though they weren't even there, exuding indignant indifference as only a keeper could.

"I have no idea," Liara said, shuffling backwards to allow the keeper access to the console. It settled in front of the dim blue interface, and with two quick jabs of its upper limbs, the screen went as dormant as the rest of the stations along the railing. The keeper turned and stalked back past them with no sign of acknowledgement whatsoever.

"Let's follow—" Garrus began, but in a sizzle of electricity and a streak of blue light, the keeper was gone. "—it? The _hell_?"

"The pathways… appear to be miniature mass relays."

Garrus grumbled, and very nearly sent a rifle round back along the pathway out of sheer spite. "You know, I'm really starting to think the Reapers didn't build this place to guide our evolution. I think they _really_ built it just to screw with us."

"**Inaccurate.**"

When the voice boomed forth from everywhere and nowhere at once, it took a lifetime of fiercely-drilled fire discipline to keep Garrus from pulling the trigger just to make sure he still could. However, when a staggeringly immense shape materialized from thin air above them, a single shot rang out. It did nothing but slice the air through the shimmering light of the kilometers-tall form of a Reaper.

"Well. Shit."

"**Asari. Turian. Progressed species two and sixteen of the current cycle. Your presence here is…**" the Reaper's booming voice paused for a long moment. "**Premature.**"

Garrus blinked, rifle still trained on the projection that filled the hollow of the Citadel above their heads. Having something to point his weapon at, even if he couldn't hit it, was a small comfort in a rapidly deteriorating situation. "Was the Reaper just at a loss for words? If so, I could _almost_ die happy right now."

"**Organic. Your death is inevitable. Your happiness is ephemeral. You stand in ignorance, and grasp at irrelevance.**"

"Garrus, we need to move. Now. If it knows we're here…"

"**Your presence was never unnoticed. You would already be dead, if it were necessary to destroy you. It is not. However, you will not be permitted to interfere with the preserved.**"

"The preserved?" Garrus glanced over his shoulder at the endless rows of cylinders hovering behind them. "You mean the stasis pods."

"**The legacies of cycles past must not be disturbed. They are the priceless remnants of each of their respective civilizations.**"

"Priceless?" asked Liara, confused… and a little curious. "I don't think I've ever heard a Reaper place any value at all on organic life before. Quite the opposite."

"What are we to you, tools left on a shelf, the ones not handy enough to be put to use like you did the Collectors? Or just trophies?" Garrus spat. "And what does that make you, the Reapers' museum curator?"

"**Neither. Like all organics, you cannot fathom the scope of our mission. I am Sentinel, guardian of the covenant between synthetics and organics.**"

"What covenant?" Liara asked incredulously. "No species I know agreed to submit themselves to you. The Protheans fought you. The cycles before them fought you. And we fight you even now."

"**Your struggles are the thrashings of untamed beasts. Instinctive. Chaotic. Futile.**"

"You will forgive us if we don't take your word on that. Garrus, let's go. It's only trying to stall us."

"**Inaccurate.**"

Liara's eyes narrowed. "How so?"

"**You are no longer relevant to the fates of your species. Your presence here precludes your involvement.**"

"Like hell," Garrus barked. "We're here to make sure your Citadel opens wide for a dose of organic relevance."

"**Incorrect.**"

"Come on, Liara. Either it's going to kill us or we're getting the arms open. I'm not going to stand here and let it talk us to death."

With a distant rumble, the arms began to open.

Turian jaws were not designed to reach the floor, but Garrus was by his own admission not a very good turian. "Well," he said, "that was easier than I thought."

"Garrus…" Liara said. "Oh, goddess… Look."

The arms of the station spread apart to reveal the space beyond, but it did not take an astronomer's knowledge to recognize the wrongness of the view. There were no stars. There were no constellations. There were no distant planets. There were no ships, and there was no battle. There was no Earth.

There was only the Milky Way itself, filling the horizon and beyond, a spiral spectacle of white and gold and more colors beyond counting, and the border of deep, consuming blackness that surrounded it all.


End file.
